January 15, 1941

On January 15, 1941, this Winchester receiver was stamped with the serial number 100931

This information was from Canfield's book "The M1 Garand RifleAttachment 68784

On January 15, 1941 at Springfield, receivers 167941 and 174469 were scrapped because of defective sight serrations :)

Attachment 68787Attachment 68785[ATTACH=CONFIG]68786[/ATTACH

By Springfield serial number 195862 the circular recess had been added to production receivers and by Winchester 104298 this circular recess had also been added (once in awhile you will find the odd Winchester with the old flat side serrations way of sequence

I wonder if that was just designed to locate the area better or was part of a redesigned machining procedure to cut them right... SA was getting an awful lot of rejects for serrations either out of place or not deep enough. In February 187236 and 198845 were scrapped for the same reason. They seem to stop after that.

Whatever the reason, one thing is certain, it was important enough that both Springfield and Winchester both added the circular recess cut at about the same time in production in early 1941.

Agreed, if Winchester did it without getting paid extra, it must have saved them money. Badly done serrations would have ruined the receiver because they couldn't recut them without first filling in the badly done ones. I'm sure they had fewer than SA because their production was so much smaller, but they must have had some. WRA never changed anything else without submitting an expense reimbursement request.

The circular radius cut was added to the receiver drawing under revision -3 21 in June 1940 and the tolerance was changed on 08-08-40 under revision 5. It took almost five months to get to the production of both Springfield and Winchester receivers

My 190xxx does not have the circular recess.....

Yes, we see that often... a change is made months before a new drawing. They called them AVOs, verbal orders to change.