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Old April 16, 2012, 03:30 PM   #5247
FlyFish
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Join Date: January 20, 2009
Location: Overlooking the Baker River Valley
Posts: 1,723
Quote:
It's a 38 Special, ser # 343xxx .
With that caliber and serial number it's a .38 Military and Police Model of 1905 - 4th Change, one of the series of predecessors to what's now manufactured as the Model 10. Unfortunately, yours falls into a wide range of possible dates with insufficient information for exact dating: 1915 (at SN 241704) to 1942 (at SN 700000). You can interpolate with that information to get an approximate date, but it will only be approximate.

Your M&P, by the way, is close to the approximate SN at which heat-treating of cylinders began (316648), at which point the guns are supposedly safe to fire with .38 Special +P ammo. However, there's a lot of differing opinion on whether the early heat treating was really done properly, and although I'm no expert in this area I'd strongly advise against using +P in this gun, assuming that you're planning to fire it at all.
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