Finally bought an 81-- and a question

[Tyrone Slothrop]

I don't have it yet-- bought it on Guns America and I'll be waiting out a couple of weeks of bureaucratic BS before I actually lock it up in my gun safe.

One thing about it has aroused my curiosity. It seems to have not one but two date stamps on the barrel. The top stamp reads LWW3- mfr. February 1950 and returned for repairs at some point. Then, below that stamp is a second, reading XPP. This would indicate a December 1945 manufacture.

Is it possible that a 1950 rifle was returned for repairs and had its barrel replaced by one made in 1945?

[jack1653]

Howdy,

Welcome to the forum. It is not unusual to have repairs made with older or newer parts than the original issue. Remington used items from their inventory to repair these fine old rifles. It is nothing to worry about. The nice thing about these old spring poles was that from the first one in 1906 through the last one in the 50's, almost all the parts were the same and can be interchanged without consequence.

It would be nice to see some pictures of your rifle and hope that it is the first of many that you may want to add.

Kindest Regards,

jack1653

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Thanks for this great resource. I have wanted an 8 or 81 for many years now and finally decided it was time. This one looks to be in pretty good shape for its age.


It occurred to me that the reverse of my theory may be true-- a 1945 rifle returned for repairs receiving a 1950 barrel jacket. I was surprised to see that Remington was building these rifles throughout World War II. One might assume that civilian rifle production would have been suspended for the duration,but apparently not. One of the photos at the GunsAmerica page shows the left side of the receiver and a number is visible "24415" Obviously not a serial number, is it a patent number?

http://www.gunsamerica.com/926311294/RE ... SAVAGE.htm

[jack1653]

Hey Tyrone,

The number is a serial number if it is on the receiver. I could not see the serial number on the rifle because it looked blocked out. The number you list is for the year 1946.

Regards,

jack1653

[81police]

Tyrone Slothrop, welcome to the forums, and nice 81!

First off the combination of a date code and a repair code are no indication that the barrel jacket and/or barrel were replaced. It just means a repair of some kind was performed. It could even have been very minor. In most cases there's no way to know definitively what the nature of the repair was.

But what you're seeing in the codes is the bottom one was stamped when the rifle was manufactured, and the additional stamp with a "3" was placed after a repair of some kind was made to the gun. That's it really. Good questions though! Good looking springpole you got there!

[Bandersnatch]

That's a nice looking pogo stick. I really like that flavor of peep sight on these guns, and the sling and recoil pad are very useful if one is going to hunt with it.