I have been well and truly bitten by the Auto-5 bug over here in the UK, every time I visit a gunshop I go hunting on the shelves in the hope to find something of interest. We seem to have a lot of them for sale here in the UK and they are generally cheap I have seen a top condition "sleeper" for £300.00 and many more in reasonable condition for £100 - £250 price mark. I saw this gun months ago, and passed it by as I had just bought a nice 1930's A5 that I was busy working on. Anyways I went to see the gun dealer again today to buy some .410 cartridges for my son and as usual had a rummage through his bargain shelves and saw the A5 was still there. She's in a a bit of a state but to me it looks mainly cosmetic the dealer assured me it was a shooter but needed a bit of TLC, as winter will be here in a few months i was tempted as a nice winter project! As I am good customer I offered him £50.00 cash which was what I has in my wallet, he accepted and I walked away with another A5 for my collection (this is only the second I have actually bought) although I have a deposit on another which I may collect some point. I took her home and started to clean her up the surface rust easily came off with fine wire wool and oil and in about an hour it looked a whole lot better! It needs new springs and the friction rings are missing completely but I'll sort that out once I have torn it down and cleaned it all up. I removed the trigger assembly and have that soaking in degreaser as we speak and will probably leave it at that for now until I get a bit more time. The stock is a bit nasty and the barrel a bit pitted but overall its in pretty good condition for a gun I think was made in the 50's! Some pics for you guys to see
Looks like you've been bitten HARD, Wingman. Happy gunsmithing, looks like you'll be doing a lot of it. I'm guessing the "1" means 1961, but there's not much info on World Market serials.
I think it's 1952 has single piece lifter and carrier spring in the receiver. Actually on that note it needs replacing but I can only find springs for the newer trigger plate installed type. Are they the same or can the new type be adapted in some way to work?
I stand corrected, it looked like a 5 digit number on my phone. And there's a lot of other markings there, maybe from the British Proof House? This source says 1951: http://www.nramuseum.org/media/940941/serialization-date of manufacture.pdf Your Field Service Manual has the details on using a new spring in an old gun. But I thought you had extra parts?
