About my M38...question

I have an Izzy 1941 M38, which I presume to be an early war.https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...STA70902-1.jpg
It also has the early war-type sling-slots.
https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...TA708841-1.jpg
https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...STA70899-1.jpg
But, my stock has the flat place on the right side that I presume makes this an M44 stock(?).
https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...TA708842-1.jpg
Question: How can this be an 'early war' stock (the sling slots) and have the flat spot on the stock which indicates an M44 stock?
Am I misinterpreting something?
(By the way, how do you like my early war "expedient" sling?)

Maybe it's a refurb?
Where's Claven when you need him?

Considering the date is 1941 and it has an M44 stock on it my vote would be a re-furb. I have on here with a laminated M44 stock, I've been looking for an early M38 stock for over a year now. The ones I see going on E-Bay are either M44's or real expensive. Sooner or later I'll get one, HTH-SDH

Something I missed on fist glance, on your gun you have a box with a slash through it indicating the gun has indeed been re-furbed. Somewhere on the wood you may find another box with a slash through it, very common. The absence of a rear sling liner and the type of front liner leads me to believe the stock you have is indeed a late war. I would leave it be, it is an original re-furbed M38-SDH

1941 is pretty early for an M38. 1939 was the first year of manufacture and 1941 was the last year for the early type rear sight ramp - which your has. GREAT feature to have on an M38 from a collector's standpoint.

The stock is a replacement from refurb. It's a 1943 or 1944 era M44 stock. Not unusual as most (all?) refurbs got mixed and matched wood when they were re-assembled.

I knew it was a refurb....I was just confused about 'early war" sling slots on a M44 stock.....but that is what it is.
The bottom of the mag has been force matched.

I would be concerned about the M44 stock, I have a 41 dated M38 also in an M44 stock w/o refurb marks and also have a 44 dated M38 in an early M38 stock also w/o re-furb marks. I love em both. When these guns came over there was little attention paid to dating parts during refurb or storage prep-SDH

FWIW, those slots aren't early war. They are mid war. Early war slots up into mid-1941 are the screwed in escutcheon plates. Mid-war they made stocks like yours. Sometime in 1944 or so, they mostly switched to the pressed escutcheons we most often see on the refurbs.

Where do the plain, no metal sling slots fit in the scheme of things?

http://7.62x54r.net/MosinID/MosinM38.htm
I was just going by the above link on 7.62x54.net. But I also noticed the only have pre-war, early war, and late/post war mentioned. They have mine in the early war (the middle one), but they didn't take into account "mid" war, I guess. I take it that this is probably a M38 that was refurbed in '44 with a M44 stock?

It's an M38 that was refurbed sometime after manufacture. It got a 1943/1944 era M44 stock put on it. I could have happened in 1944 or 1964 or really anytime before it was imported to the USA. Impossible to know.

Plain no metal sling slots were first used in either late 1941 or early 1942 and were used up into early 1944.