Oddball early /26\ I found on Gunbroker

[running-man]

Disregard the $@$#@$ zombie paint scheme:



Throws a bit of a monkey wrench in the ghost to /26\ transition we had worked out. 





I wonder if the transition wasn't a clean break and the Chinese laborers sometimes forgot the /26\ stamp early in the production after the changeover?  Also could be a misstamp and the S/N should be 231241..all the other components were 213241 though. 

At any rate, data trumps theory every time.  We may need to revise things a bit on the timeline.... 

[Loose}{Cannon]

I dont think so....  we have next to nothing on the rifle other then one crappy pic and the gun is.... painted. 

What arsenal stamp is it? When was it applied? Was it scrubbed? Rearsenaled? Commercial?

Too many unknowns to say.... anything.

[Loose}{Cannon]

Even if it were..... whats that, a couple hundred gun overlap?  How many lines were there, and how many per day?

213,200 to 213,900 would have happened with an hour I bet.

If anything, I would say it indicated the amount of time it would take for a stamp to be handed to the stamping monkey on one line and instruct them on what to do with it, and then walk to the next line. Possibly dif wing of the facility.  How long was their lunch break?

Either way....  do the math.  This was within minutes of one another.   

[running-man]

True all that.  Here's the auction: http://www.gunbroker.com/item/676345956

I'm not saying it blows up the timeline, just that it's not cut and dried between 213617 and 213928 anymore; there are inconsistencies, which is perfectly ok.  The fact that it's within 400 to 700 guns easily translates to hours (or a day) apart based on known production numbers, I hadn't thought of that one. 

I have no reason to doubt this is a /26\ stamp and that this is an early /26\ gun.  Gun appears to have been a Navy Arms std. carbine w/ rail installed. 
Features that haven't been bubbafied are all period correct and the font across all components is what I'd expect.  Hopefully another 213k gun shows up and we can narrow things down even further. 

[Boris Badinov]

I think you aree both on the right track. Multiple lines of production. One line a bit slower than another.

I think the overlap you've theorized still holds up. Not a perhaps cutoff but a narrow window (a few hundred guns) of overlap.

Wow...just looked at the auction photos. That is one UGLY carbine.

RM-- are you in the mix to acquire it?

[running-man]

No, it sold back in August, I was going through the GB listings and it popped up.  The S/N is right in the correct range.  LC is right and I hadn't really thought about it: S/Ns within a few hundred is tantamount to being built on the same day based on 100k+ guns built per year.