“That’s the serial number,” the woman said. “What does it tell you?”
Here’s a short informational story based on the Smith & Wesson Model 34-1 and its serial numbers. The old gunsmith’s hands moved slowly across the blue steel of the Kit Gun. It was a Smith & Wesson Model 34-1, .22 LR, with a four-inch barrel and walnut stocks worn smooth by decades of pocket carry. The revolver had just come into his shop, brought in by a woman whose late father had kept it in a sock drawer since the 1970s. smith and wesson 34-1 serial numbers
He handed it back gently. “You don’t have an old gun. You have a time capsule from the last years when a master revolver was built one at a time. The serial number is its birth certificate — and yours says 1968, Springfield, Massachusetts, made by men who cared about the click of a cylinder stop.” “That’s the serial number,” the woman said
“Everything,” he said, picking up a tattered copy of the Standard Catalog of Smith & Wesson . It was a Smith & Wesson Model 34-1,
The gunsmith spun the cylinder. The hand-fitted lockup was still tight. “He wasn’t wrong. The 34-1s with serials in the M range are some of the finest rimfire revolvers Smith ever built. They were still hand-fitted back then, before the mass-production changes of the 1970s.”