Hello Gentlemen.
I had a chance to go through small collection of DCP marked Models 14 1/2 and found one rifle with strange buttplate. I'm not experienced with these guns, I have just started learning about them, coming from military side of collecting. I read here that there were 5 types of buttplates (viewtopic.php?p=32740#p32740) however I saw only two - steel and Bakelite, I haven't seen pictures of other types so I am confused - is this some kind of home made cast copy of Bakelite one or is it a factory one? This buttplate sits on the rifle 341XX. There's no number on stock and on plate, in the same manner as there is no number on bakelite ones.
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There are a bunch of those cast aluminum butt plates around, you usually find them on older guns. Ken Blauch, Tom Hemphill, and myself had a get together at Kens place maybe 20 years ago, I brought along a rifle with one of those plates attached to it.
Our opinion at the time (both Ken & Tom had seen a few) is someone (not Remington) cast a bunch to replace the easily chipped/broken bakelite plates used on early rifles. The reason you don't see serials on the bakelite plates is one smack with a number die and you destroy the butt plate.
Remington recognized the problem of the bakelite plate quickly and went to the steel shotgun style plate which had the same contour. The new steel plate used the same identical screws, as I recall the cast aluminum plates used a screw with a larger head (at least the ones that passed through my hands were like that).
Your old 14-1/2 probably needed a new plate, one of those was available, and so it was attached. When I received rifles for repair that had the cast aluminum plate I would just paint them with Krylon Semi Flat Black and put them back on the rifle.
Its not a Remington part but was certainly well done.
