I found a Winchester 1917 at a local shop for $550. Stock looks great, metal is parkerized, the receiver and the floor plate have the same number on them. The barrel is stamped 9-18 behind the front sight, the bolt has a W stamped on the underside of the bolt handle. Also stamped on the barrel is CAI, so my question is did Century put these things together or just import them. It looks awesome, but if Century had their hands on it I will probably pass. Thanks everyone

They should just be the importer, but I'm not an expert.

That's what I'm thinking as well

Century did some awful things to Enfields.  I just recently saw two of their abortions. These guns started out as Pattern 14 Canadian drill rifles, with a huge hole drilled from side to side through the barrel and stock, in the chamber area.  Century rebarreled them with surplus American M1917 barrels that they had, and substituted a few other parts to make ersatz M1917's! Of course the hole in the stock was still there. A company that would do that is capable of anything.

On M1917's, the only serialized part is the receiver. If the floorplate is numbered to the receiver, it wasn't done at the factory, or in U.S.service. On the other hand, almost every part of the M1917 is marked with the initial of the maker -- W for Winchester, R for Remington, and E for Eddystone. It's common for these guns to have mixed parts, but the mixing was done after they left the factory.

$550 is not a bad price. In my area, the going rate for M1917 Enfields in collectible condition is about $800.

Do you think it is likely Century worked on this particular rifle? Searching around the web has turned up basically zero information. My hope is that they just imported them. The outward appearance of the rifle is phenomenal.

FWIW, Century did import a bunch of M1917 Enfields back in 1993.  The ones I saw were ex-Lend Lease rifles that had been sent to the UK.  The ones I remember being for sale were from all three manufacturers.

IIRC, Parkerizing was done by the US when they pulled M1917s out of storage before December 7th for reconditioning and shipment to other countries through Lend Lease.

Is there a red painted stripe (or evidence of red paint) around the stock and forend close to the muzzle?

I have heard they were parkerized in the US as well. I didn't see any paint or areas where paint may have been removed.

If an M1917 has serialed parts other than the receiver, some foreign country owned it. That was never done in US service.

Who knows what's been done to that rifle and when. I'd think really hard about buying a CAI-imported M1917, given that ones without import marks aren't exactly rare.

Yes, and at that time, worn or rusted barrels were replaced by new barrels made by High Standard or Johnson Automatics. This wasn't a problem, except on guns made by Eddystone. Eddystone, in the original manufacture, apparently used excessive torque in installing the barrels. When these original barrels were unscrewed in the rebarreling process, the amount of force used was enough to crack some of the receivers. These are hairline cracks and are difficult to see. For that reason, I would avoid buying a rebarreled Eddystone.

The proper way to rebarrel an Enfield that has the original barrel is to make a relief cut on a lathe, where the barrel abuts the front of the receiver. This allows it to be unscrewed easily. It shouldn't matter if you are going to scrap the barrel anyway. (The WW2 arsenal shops didn't do it this way.)

That is solid advice, and the reason it's not in my safe right now. I have owned a few guns by them and they weren't any good. I suppose it wouldn't hurt to wait until the next fun show to try to find one there, the 1917 I looked at had a cobweb in the barrel. Guess it's been there awhile.