Quote Originally Posted by Airsporterman View Post
BSA did have problems obtaining wood for stocks at one stage, some stocks were obtained from an Italian manufacturer, these were all 1 piece.
It's possible that you may have a mix of wood in a 3 piece stock, some of the colours of the walnut stocks can differ greatly, none of my Mk1s stocks look the same although they are all the same in each rifle - I have seen some that are not.
It's even possible that you have a mix of hardwoods in your 3 piece - I am sure I have heard of this before with someone swearing it was part beech.

ASM
Some early airsporter stocks were obtained from an Italian manufacturer. I had one and it had the SILE manufacturers stamp inside the inletting. The reason BSA and Webley got rid of their stockmaking plants was due to the difficulties in obtaining regular supplies of timber, especially beech, most of which came from eastern block countries. I believe it timing was around the 1970's but am not sure.. The Italian companies concentrated on woodwork where BSA and W&S made guns as a main product line. I believe some of the redundant stockmaking equipment was used bt a Sheffield stockmaking company when they first started up in business.