I might have misread what Rory and others said, but, I don't think your ship date on the rifle is unreliable, it's just out of sequence. Maybe old Fred grabbed an action and stuck it in his locker, or on a shelf, to build his own gun. Then old Fred croaked, and no one found it for 2 years, who knows?
That's right. As far as anybody knows, the accepted/ship dates are reliable. It's just that guns weren't finished in serial number order. It might be that mine that shipped 2 years late went around to expositions and a world fair - it was B engraved and fancy walnut. But nothing recorded about expositions, and no entry for the engraving/other options.
You get what you get. More factory letters AND bringing the data here does help to refine dates. Don't get me wrong.. they do help. But it takes a number of them, and lettering "regular" guns is the most useful since special order guns are the most likely to ship late.
To confuse things even more, the later ledgers from 40's and on only record ship dates. Which means if they had a large backlog, the dates reported include the lag time before shipping. I always prefer the "Accepted from factory" date, because that's the actual "manufacture date".
