'fourbore' - Springfield Armory used approximately 30,000 Italian walnut stock blanks, due to a shortage of cured American black walnut blanks.

From my experience, the Italian wood will usually have 1899, 1900, or 1901 cartouche dates.

The Italian wood is often easy to spot because of its light 'golden' color and distinctive wood grain.

Sometimes, the Italian stocks were darkened with stain, to better match the darker American walnut stocks in a military unit.

In regard to faint cartouche stamps, this may be an indication a stock was skillfully 'scraped' during Armory rifle rebuild/refurbish work.

Attached photos of Italian wood showing:
color, grain, 'tiger stripe' and a distinctive 'crescent' pattern, that is often seen.
Last pictures show an Italian stock with an American walnut hand-guard; this stock has a pronounced 'tiger stripe' and was darkened with stain, long ago.

(p.s. - Mark_Duaite has done some very nice Krag stock restorations. Possibly, his Italian stock 'stain problem' was a forearm-splice using a different walnut species)?

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