Here's what I think, Owen never built that rifle, it has none of Owen's features on it, not one. The barrel marking to me is bogus, a very poor fake. I have never seen an Owen with those big letters, it reminds me of a G&H that RIA sold some years ago that had the same kind of big lettering on the barrel. I know that one was fake because I own the G&H with the number on the barrel and I had bought it from RIA years before that. They had a G&H letter because all you had to do to get the letter is send them the number on the barrel. RIA did give me a copy of the G&H letter and the funny thing was that the letter description didn't match the features on the fake rifle but did match my rifle.
Also, the floor plate engraving is pretty crude and I doubt that Owen would have sent out anything like that.
About the above comment about using the military barrels, I would say most of the early sporters 100 years ago used the issue barrels.
Last edited by DanLH; 12/09/24 12:31 AM.