Rear sight - marked or not?

[illen]

Hi!

Laid my hands on my first FN 1900 rifle a few weeks ago. To make a long story short, when I recieved the rifle I found out that the rear sight came off pretty easily and I saw that the four digits underneath the base of the sight wasn't matching the rest of the gun.

Was the base of the rear sight marked with a serial number or do the digits I found refere to something else?

Regards,
Illen

[81police]

It is my understanding that the rear sights were marked with the rifle's corresponding serial number

[ranman]

Cam is correct, Browning rear sights have the rifle serial number stamped on the underside. The elevator is also stamped with the last two digits only.

[illen]

Thank you for your response. It is hard to say of course, but due to the rarity of these types of firearm I assume the change of the rear sight took place long ago. I mean, it is quite unlikely you would come by a spare rear sight these days..

If it wasn’t fitted with the rear sight of another gun from the factory for some reason. One can only guess..

Regards,
Illen

[illen]

The serial number of the firearm is 2971 and the sight is 2855.

[ranman]

FC7BD86D-CDA4-43E9-8761-D4EBBBD0CC95.jpeg (684.57 KiB) Viewed 14452 times

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This is an FN rear sight( round barrel) and the serial number should match the rifle . Usually the whole serial number is present, but I have viewed them with only the last two digits stamped. The elevator is marked on one side only and usually has only the last two digits stamped on the bottom.

[illen]

Thank you for the pictures!

Mine is the ribbed variant. The reason why the rear sight was changed is to me unknown. Perhaps it was damaged, I can’t see any other reason to why it was changed to another identical sight.

I don’t have many pics of the rifle at the moment but I can post a few at least.

Is it possible to tell when the rifle with serial number 2855 was made?
/illen

[illen]

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[illen]

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[illen]

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[illen]

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As you can see in the previous pictures I have not mounted the rear sight yet, however it is in place now.

You can also see that a piece of wood was loose due to too much force on the buttplate (note crack in buttplate). Though the piece of wood is glued back in place now.

[ranman]

The Great Remington 8 book by John Henwood suggests all 4,913 FNs may have been made prior to the outbreak of World War 1 in 1914. The book also reads the Model 1900 was dropped from FN catalogs in 1929. That’s about as close as you can get for manufacturing dates.