Thank you Alexander. This is truly amazing work. Great source for those that seek the truth about these wonderful firearms.
I must say, i am most surprized about the MO markings, always thought my "mo/52" 1945 tt 33 was special.. :)
Looking forward to learning more and sharing my findings.
I'll add my praises also. I stumbled upon this site and am AMAZED at the valuable and interesting info. Thank you Alexander!
I want to second other people's praise for Alexander on compiling all these vast amounts of information into such a nice website. Большое Вам спасибо!
I totally bought into the /1\ indicated refurbishment in the old GDR/DDR... Turned out it was Irkutsk in the 1980s! Thanks to Alexander's and some other researchers' diligence and research, we're only now learning about a lot of the "lost meanings" of the numerous markings. The sheer number of them now makes sense too! The idea was that a particular ordnance worker or official could be tracked on the quality and oversight of a procedure done to a particular firearm. For me, I'm going over all of these marks on my collection and determining what they mean or imply. I'm lucky enough to have two "Factory 10/Factory 180" Izhevsk rifles that emanated from the USSR to the Spanish Republic to the Spanish State to the United States, so I can see what the original factory marks looked like versus the repair and refitting marks, commonly referred to as "refurbishment" marks by collectors in the United States. I have three 1941 rifles that do not have cyrillic letter prefixes on the serial numbers, and all three have Tula receivers: 1895, 1917, and 1919. Two have the wheat sheaves/wreath and hammer-and-sickle emblem and/or the the Izhevsk/ Factory 10/180 logo, but one has nothing at all. I suspect the latter may have been an M91 that was turned into an 1891/30. I also got to finally figure out that my 1944 Tula M44 with a receiver made at Factory 180 in Izhevsk in 1942 has a stock mark from a Mobile Artillery Repair unit?! Greatly looking forward to further updates as these become available! Дякую!
Спасибо!
These marking are cool because they are the only way to get info about places where rifles were during their service life. I must say that my most favorite type of the markings are prewar markings. Nobody paid attention to them earlier, hope now people will become more educated and some new markings will be discovered. Beside, soon plan to post pictures of former MO depot. It is not functioning since 2009