The pawn shop gods were good to me today. Found a CAI import marked 1917 that bubba hadnt gotten to for a whopping $350. Problem is though is that the receiver marking and the date on the barrel have been ground off. Anybody have any guesses on who or what country wanted to remove these markings? I have read a few reports on the internet of similar 1917's.

Aside from that everything is there and in good shape. The barrel is a pretty worn 2 groove so the plan is to pick up a new Criterion barrel from the CMP. Will post pics sometime tomorrow when I have a chance to do so.

Don't know why someone would grind those off? Check me on this, but I recall reading somewhere that the front receiver ring on the P17's can crack when taking the barrel off?
Yep, the Eddystone rifles.

http://forums.thecmp.org/showthread.php?t=83145

I recall reading ads in Shotgun News years ago of some M1903 and M1917 rifles that were imported with the US markings scrubbed on them.  At the time; the importer said that the markings were removed by the CIA.  It was just an ad.  I have no idea if it was true or not.

They must be on as tight as a Mosin Barrel. I had one I couldn't get off at all.

Just shoot it and see how it does. One of my most accurate rifles was a K98 with a sewer pipe for a bore.

I did clean it up with a stainless brush and then used a cloth wrapped around a 22 caliber brush, covered it in Flitz, and ran it up and down until it had some shine to it

China.  The US provided a large number of M1917s and a smaller number of M1903s to the Nationalist Chinese during WW2.  Century then brought in a big shipment of these back to the US (in the 1980s IIRC), some which had been scrubbed of some/all markings by the Chinese at some point.


I have a Century M1917, but mine came out of Canada.  Those were not scrubbed, but had additional Canadian markings added to the stock.  These were mostly used by the Canadians during WW2 as training rifles, often by COTC Cadets at Canadian universities (the Canadian version of ROTC).

That explains it. I would post pics up but for some reason imgur doesnt wanna cooperate. It is counterbored and I knew thats not something usually done by the US or Britain. New Criterion barrel is on the way and I have a friend whose done a few 1917 barrels whose offered to help out. Now I get to wait on the CMP to ship the barrel...