WINCHESTER BARREL DATES
Are most all 1894 barrels from the 1900 era dated on the bottom? Is that the actual date of manufacture of the gun? I have seen many barrels dated a few years off of the reported dates of manufacture.
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Hello,
Winchester did not begin date stamping the barrels until the early 1920s... several years after the Model "1894" era, and ceased stamping them circa 1956.
The earliest Model 94 barrel date I have observed thus far is "25" (1925). Typically, the barrel dates do match up with the Polishing Room serialization records almost perfectly, but there are a few exceptions. To give you an example, a January 1940 serialized receiver can quite often have a "39" marked barrel attached to it, and likewise, a December 1939 serialized receiver could very easily have a "40" marked barrel on it. In my research study of the Model 94, 55, and 64, I have very rarely ever found a barrel date that was off by more than one-year, and in those very few instances that I have found one, it was one of the less common calibers (e.g. 25-35, 32-40, or 38-55).0
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