Not sure how Brophy calculated his calendar year serial number table in his '03 book, but I would hesitate using it for anything beyond a general guide. He seems to disagree with himself. His '03 book and his armory book differ on numerous yearly entries - some small, but others not so small. As an example, his '03 book shows 105,120 .30 cal. rifles made in FY 07. But his armory book shows 102,118 and you have to add 3,002 .22 cal. Gallery practice rifles to arrive at 105,120. It's a real mess in many places.

Since the figures in his armory book are more detailed and the book was published later, I would tend to favor its results. The biggest challenge is finding reliable serial number/manufacture date correlations. Does anyone know of any semi-reliable official data of this sort besides #800,000 at the institution of the new receiver forging process (probably June 1918) and the first Mark I in November 1918 at #1,034,503? Any documented mentions on when the complete rifles and barreled receivers were made during the ramp up to full scale production by the new method - complete rifles first, rifles and B/Rs mixed, etc.?