Mosin Nagant: is there any significance to a missing "r" after the date?

[ChrisP]

I was just looking at my Mosins and of the 3, 2 of them do not have the r after the date. My '33 Tula and '38 Izhevsk 91/30's both lack the r, but my 1944 Izhevsk M44 has it. After looking at some pictures on 7.62x54r.net I see there is a good mix of rifles with and without the r.
Now, maybe my Google-fu is off, but a search only turned up one discussion on this topic. An old calguns.net thread where a gentleman's 1942 or 1943 rifle was missing the r. Most people seemed to attribute it to rushed wartime production or Ivan had too much vodka while on the assembly line that day. Surely, rushed production wouldn't be the case for my 33 and 38 rifles.
Does anyone have some insight or opinions on this? Thanks!

Information

Warning: This is a relatively older thread This discussion is older than 360 days. Some information contained in it may no longer be current.

[Eaglelord17]

Very interesting, I just took a look at photos of the receivers of the various Mosin Nagants I have owned, and all of them have the 'r' except my 1926 Tula Infantry Rifle, and my 1927 Tula Dragoon. I don't know what to make of it, maybe it was very lightly struck on the receiver? Maybe they simply didn't apply the marking or the die could have been broken? Maybe they just didn't care. Definitely a interesting point though, I am curious as to what others thoughts are on it.

[Flying10uk]

I did wonder if sometimes the "r" was lost, if lightly struck, during the post war Soviet refurb programme because of the receiver being skimmed/ground/polished to remove tooling marks?

[Eaglelord17]

It wouldn't be in the case of the two I have as they are non-refurbished.

[fernleaf]

Factory 314 NKV in Tula seem to have dropped the 'goda' marking in the late 1920s - perhaps when they went to a roll stamp that omitted the last digit of the date so it could be stamped separately and they'd get ten years use out of one stamping die before having to replace it.

Factory 74 NKV in Izhevsk seem to use the stamping for almost all of their production apart from 1941 from what I can see but I've only looked at a very small sample size.

[jjjxlr8]

Here's some from #74

Notice how light the mark is on the 1940 example.


1937 with (refurbed)


1938 without (non-refurbed)


1939 with (refurb)


1940 with (non-refurbed)


another 1940 with (refurbed)


1941 without (nazi refurb)


1942 with (refurbed)