For a rifle in the serial range, look on the lever boss, the big hump that the lever pivots on. On the front of the boss there will be an oval with a one or two digit number and a letter. That is called the Lever Boss Code, or LBC. The letter is the date code.They started the date codes in 1949 with "A", 1950 was "B", 1951 was "C", etc, etc. No O or Q, they looked too much alike. You may need to get a magnifying glass out to read it, the stamps are kind of soft sometimes and hard to read. If you can make out the LBC someone here can give you the date, or just figure it out starting with "A" in 49, Joe.
