Terry T said:
Chad,
I'm a computer guy. I made my living building databases (until I retired last year). From the way the nice ladies in records answer the phone questions, I can surmise that they are using a computer data base that has at least fields for Serial Number, Catalog 'Number', and Shipping Date. It may not have casting date. That may be in another data base that was kept for ATF containing the dates that Serial Numbers were assigned to the frames. ATF doesn't like unnumbered frames loose in a shop. The common link between the two data bases would be the Serial Number.
I'd simply let the computer do the sorting and counting by each field.
Terry T
Yes....Sorting is definitely the way to do something like that...unless maybe there are hundreds if not thousands of out-of-serial number sequence shipped Ruger firearms of certain models that were shipped earlier than Ruger's database surmises (by a few months) or later...up to many years after Ruger's database surmises.
Not arguing with the theory there Terry, its just that I don't think there's any way for Ruger to do that effectively without creating even more confusion than they have today.
Examples: .44 flattop production generally ended about 1963 with most of the cleanup guns leaving in that year. But in 1974 serial number 10 left the factory and #13971 left the factory in 1976, so Ruger should have those sn's (or any others that left in those years) listed on their site for the years 1974 and 1976? or OM Super Bearcats mfg through at least 1981 (which our 91-57490 was?). There are a lot of other examples I can think of as well.
I remember a few years ago while keeping track of Ruger's changes on the 10/22 that there were bunches of 256- prefixed guns being shipped from the factory of models that had been discontinued years before...yet at the time Ruger's prefix for the 10/22 was advanced into at least the 350- prefix.
What I'm saying is, there would be such a huge overlap of serial numbers for each and every year of any given model that Ruger's dates of manufacture, would in effect be worthless for anybody looking up the "general" date of a gun's manufacture. As it is, Ruger's "dates" are probably 95% or better accurate for the dates listed. Its the other 5% or less of their guns that throw's the whole thing out of whack.
The way Ruger's OM era records worked anyway, the serial numbers were already pre-written in their "day books". A date would not get entered in there until the gun made it through final inspection (what we collectors also call the manufacture date). The only other date in there was the ship date.
Technically, once a gun gets a serial number, it has to be logged throughout the premises as a firearm. I suppose there are other "internal" records that keep track of this stuff, but I don't know how they do/did this.
Chet15
