Could easy be an original military that was reworked or a sporter that was restored. We did a lot of that, stuff the customer owned and we reworked it as they wanted. As Neil used to say, "the customer is almost right". If Ballard put a new barrel on it will almost always will have a letter stamped under the fore-arm indicating manufacturer of the barrel ie; D= Douglas,B= Badger, K= Krieger, 7C= Ballard in house. If it is an "in house" manufactured rolling block rifle it will have Ballard company logo and a serial number in accordance with US law. There were some where up to about 20 of these made. Receivers came from an Ok. company with an affiliation to the owner at the time. Trigger guards, hammers, blocks, were castings, some from Dave Higginbottom and some from I think, Rodney Storey. I did the machine work on the castings and made a lot of other small parts, screws, pins, rear barrel sights, forend lugs. etc. I remember getting quite mad because we had no reference gun to get screw location, dovetail data and all that misc. stuff. I went down town one lunch break and spent $1500 on an original sporter to use as reference. it wasn't in the shape to be worth that much but as I say, I was mad about no progress being made and happy to get something to work with. It was our culture there to make rifles that original parts would interchange with. Still have that sporter, someday I'll reline the thing and maybe shoot a deer with it. my $.02, Dennis
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