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Rear sight - marked or not?

Posted: Sun Oct 11, 2020 2:37 pm
by illen
Hi!

Laid my hands on my first FN 1900 rifle a few weeks ago. To make a long story short, when I recieved the rifle I found out that the rear sight came off pretty easily and I saw that the four digits underneath the base of the sight wasn't matching the rest of the gun.

Was the base of the rear sight marked with a serial number or do the digits I found refere to something else?

Regards,
Illen

Re: Rear sight - marked or not?

Posted: Tue Oct 13, 2020 6:27 am
by 81police
It is my understanding that the rear sights were marked with the rifle's corresponding serial number

Re: Rear sight - marked or not?

Posted: Tue Oct 13, 2020 7:50 am
by ranman
Cam is correct, Browning rear sights have the rifle serial number stamped on the underside. The elevator is also stamped with the last two digits only.

Re: Rear sight - marked or not?

Posted: Wed Oct 14, 2020 4:42 pm
by illen
Thank you for your response. It is hard to say of course, but due to the rarity of these types of firearm I assume the change of the rear sight took place long ago. I mean, it is quite unlikely you would come by a spare rear sight these days..

If it wasn’t fitted with the rear sight of another gun from the factory for some reason. One can only guess..

Regards,
Illen

Re: Rear sight - marked or not?

Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2020 10:39 am
by illen
The serial number of the firearm is 2971 and the sight is 2855.

Re: Rear sight - marked or not?

Posted: Fri Oct 16, 2020 10:14 am
by ranman
FC7BD86D-CDA4-43E9-8761-D4EBBBD0CC95.jpeg
FC7BD86D-CDA4-43E9-8761-D4EBBBD0CC95.jpeg (684.57 KiB) Viewed 10230 times
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This is an FN rear sight( round barrel) and the serial number should match the rifle . Usually the whole serial number is present, but I have viewed them with only the last two digits stamped. The elevator is marked on one side only and usually has only the last two digits stamped on the bottom.

Re: Rear sight - marked or not?

Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2020 11:26 am
by illen
Thank you for the pictures!

Mine is the ribbed variant. The reason why the rear sight was changed is to me unknown. Perhaps it was damaged, I can’t see any other reason to why it was changed to another identical sight.

I don’t have many pics of the rifle at the moment but I can post a few at least.

Is it possible to tell when the rifle with serial number 2855 was made?
/illen

Re: Rear sight - marked or not?

Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2020 11:30 am
by illen
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Re: Rear sight - marked or not?

Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2020 11:32 am
by illen
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Re: Rear sight - marked or not?

Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2020 11:34 am
by illen
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Re: Rear sight - marked or not?

Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2020 11:39 am
by illen
4.

As you can see in the previous pictures I have not mounted the rear sight yet, however it is in place now.

You can also see that a piece of wood was loose due to too much force on the buttplate (note crack in buttplate). Though the piece of wood is glued back in place now.

Re: Rear sight - marked or not?

Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2020 7:47 am
by ranman
The Great Remington 8 book by John Henwood suggests all 4,913 FNs may have been made prior to the outbreak of World War 1 in 1914. The book also reads the Model 1900 was dropped from FN catalogs in 1929. That’s about as close as you can get for manufacturing dates.