what is it ? I-O inc.

[Ikecornell]

[bbush44]

This should help.

http://chinesesks.weebly.com/195960-letter-guns.html

[Loose}{Cannon]

Its a G.   

[Greatguns]

Although appearing like an upside-down 1, my guess is it is an I letter series Chinese type 56 rifle. If you can post a pic of the SN on the receiver we could probably confirm that.

[Loose}{Cannon]

The serial data collected recently on the letter series rifles hold important information also. Shown below is the list of letter prefixes found on the letter series rifles.

24 letters:  A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I-J-K-L-M-N-O-P-R-S-T-U-V-W-X-Y

There is also a funky looking (ς) letter that is believed to be nothing more than a funny shaped (C).  It has also "said" to be an "omega" symbol because some have been observed with a "hook" at the top as well as the bottom. If this is the case, I then ask what on earth would the reason be to rotate the symbol 90° counterclockwise like that? Furthermore the omega symbol in Greek stands for O, and there is already a well documented O letter prefix.  Adding to the confusion, you may notice a backward (J) on the list. This symbol/letter isn't even a backwards J in the first place as it is not Cyrillic, Modern Roman, Latin, or Greek. In fact, it would appear to be more like a block style letter G or an L. You can clearly see in the picture below how the bottom of the letter is not curved, but bock shaped. Also worth noting is that the upper left portion of the top cross is much shorter than the right. If you take off that little line extending to the left, you will have a modern block style G or an L.  It's that simple. The letter Q has never been observed on this series rifle.  It was used in ancient Latin but lost favor to C and G and was relegated to the Qu pair for a <k> or <kw> sound.  (There are those "odd" letters again C and G).  The belief as to why the letters C and G were slightly modified from their original/normal looking state is a matter of correcting  a possible mis-identification between a hand-stamped O, G, and C.  A slight error in the angle of the stamp when struck can easily produce a C out of an O or a G.

Here is an example of a Latin block style G.... It is actually found in the Old English Latin alphabet.





Regardless as to the exact classification of each letter, the important information is how many there are and how many in each letter. Our serial collection and other data shows 24 letters with a possible 15,000 rifles each. If the letter prefix represents 1 month of production, as many believe, then we have 24 X 15,000 = 360,000 rifles. Compared to production estimates calculated by serial number data collection on the other early rifle variations, this would represent TWO years worth of production.

360,000 divided by  2 = 180k rifles per year. =  These could easily be the missing 1960/61   4-5mil rifles.

There isn't a letter Z because they did not get that far in the alphabet when only needing 24 and dropping the Q.

[Loose}{Cannon]

RM is going to go over this in more detail when he returns from Lent.

Furthermore, there is already a well established letter I.   

[Greatguns]

Thanks LC, I do need to brush up on the letter series type 56s. Now that you posted those other pics I can see it is not an I. Still, from your chart looks more like an L than a G to me. BUT, my eyes aren't what they used to be, lol.

[Ikecornell]

All good info however I'm still not sure what year it is, now if it were a M-60 Well then that's another story altogether.

[Loose}{Cannon]

1959 or 1960..  As close as it gets with chinese letter guns.