Hi all. Got left behind when you all moved. Finally found my way back. I guess the old posts are lost , so a little update would prob'ly be good.
A year or two ago I posted about a US&S I picked up. Out of town gunshow , bad light , no books ( left at home) , etc. I found when I got home it looked to be a 95% plus orig finished gun , mid range ser # , but with two odd features. No inspectors stamp and every part was stamped with the gun's last three digits of the ser.#.
Knowing of the large theft problem US&S had , the lack of the inspectors mark was not suprising , but why the numbering? I thought this might have been an inspection trial pistol ( people here said no) , others here thought it could have been a faker ( but why would a faker do such good work but not know we don't stamp every part?) , others that it was captured and stamped ( never heard of that being done) , and other theories , but none seem to answer all the questions.
Well , I think I found the answer. Reading Dolf's new 50cal BMG book , he talks about a standard manufactoring procedure of the time. They would , at set up , make three guns. One at min. dimentions , one at maximum , and one dead center. They would then mix the parts up between them to make sure that any part made " in spec" would work with any other part made " in spec ". Now , because we are dealing with parts from one mfg. , and the only difference is a few thousandths , it would be wise to mark each part as to which gun it came from. These guns remained at the mfg. , as fitting test beds during production. Also to test parts when they are changed to make sure they will work with all other guns already made. Therefore , because they never left the factory , they were never stamped with the insp. stamp.
So this would explain the lack of an insp mark and the marking of all the parts under what appears to be the orig. exc. finish. Also in the Aug. issue of "Man at Arms" on the back cover is a M1922 rifle just like this ( can't find it now to quote what they call it). The only thing not explained is the mid-production ser # rather than an early one , unless this was made to replace one that had been "lunchboxed". Of course , too , US&S had only a single ser# block issued , so they might have picked early-mid-late numbers (for min-mid-max specs) to stamp these with.
You answer one question , only to find two more. Anyway , it looks like I fell into somethig they only made three of ( or four , or ?) Chris
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