George,
I thought the same as you in the area where the mags spine meets the drum. But then I looked at pictures in my above mentioned books and I saw variations there on my type I too. I wanted to say something about the fingers that wrap around the drum too. The repro has dink marks on all fingers. Mine has only a couple of these dinks and they appear to be some sort of proof marks. The button on the arm repro is checkered while mine is not, but it is checkered in the books. Mine looks like the one in Reeses book. The screw that holds the drum together is also different than mine. Mine looks like the one in Reeses book. The drum may have a plug in it to make it legal in some states. I could go on and on about differences but that would be difficult to do in writing. I should have a digital camera to show some of the differences. I didn't post earlier the differences because I read in my books that there were three different manufactures but that these three manufactures had several patterns so I didn't go into it. I don't think that I saw any manufactures marks of this repro but I could be wrong. All in all, I can't tell if this is really a repro or not.
One thing that I would like to ask. Is there only one spring or is there two springs in the Trommel type I? I have one spring that appears to approximately fill the spine and I always assumed that there would be a second one in the drum. But then I looked at Reeses diagram and the spring looks longer. My spring is 12" long and does not look like that could go all the way down the spine and around the drum. Pulling the arm around after I removed the spring in the spine indicates that there is a second spring in there. Could it be that the seller is wrong about the drum only holding eight rounds? If he doesn't have a loading tool, he may have seen the 12" spring and made an assumption without pulling on the arm to feel the second spring. I am asking and not making a statement.
Big Norm
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