Quote Originally Posted by ccdjg View Post
All very valid points, and without close personal inspection it would be very difficult to reach a firm decision one way or the other. However, there is one feature that is difficult to explain away, and that is the lack of any sign of stamped lettering on the body of the gun. To have rubbed away all traces of the impressed lettering by natural wear and tear is not really conceivable, as it is very difficult to do even with emery paper. If the lettering was deliberately removed there would either be evidence of depressions in the metal surface, or if an attempt was made to hide these depressions by rubbing down the whole surface of the pistol then the various edges of the frame would be very rounded, which they aren't. It seems to me that the gun was never stamped.

So if the gun is a modification by an amateur how did he happen to come across a Mark 1 that had somehow left the factory without any lettering? I stand to be corrected, but I don't think such a lapse of quality control by Webley has ever been reported before. I find it easier to accept that if the gun had no stamping then it never actually left the factory and so could have one that was pulled out of production for experimentation.

The fact that the pistol has a serial number corresponding closely to the end of the run of straight grip pistols is also a bit of a coincidence.
It probably did come out of the factory by the back door---------someone asked for a body to tinker with, but i still do not think it is an official factory prototype. It may have come out of the scrap bin as it had not been stamped correctly. The previous things I mention about the solid alloy grips, the locating pin, 2 bolts to hold the frame to the body and in an awkward place------------and the fact that you would have to unbolt it to get the trigger out. If you were going to all that trouble for a prototype, wouldn't you have had a bigger trigger guard loop (llike the Premier Mk2) so the the trigger could be removed without having to unbolt the frame? Obviously, Webley would not have put something like that bolt up grip into production. If you just wanted to mock up a crude slant gripped model to try, wouldn't it have been easier to cut and weld the grip?