Interesting Item

Charlie, no jollies. This should ease your mind for the weekend

As pointed out in the serial number pages

1-5 were Inlands Tool Room models, these were not made on production machines.

6-10 were Winchesters Tool Room models, these were not made on production machines.

11-30 were Inlands Engineering Models made from the engineering drawings.

31-99 were Experimental assigned numbers.  This was the predecessor to the X series carbines.

Some examples can be found in the War Baby series and the Club Newsletters. Examples would be the carbines that had 2 recoil springs or the pilot T4/M2 carbines.

So the first question is what makes this Inland 92 stand out as an experimental? Well, nothing. However, with anything that was experimental it may have been used in several experiments and firing tests. I would not be surprised if a true experimental was refinished, had a mix of parts, or had some damage. But with close scrutiny things can be found either consistent or inconsistent.

Remember, Never say never, Never say always!

It seems like all the pieces to the puzzle have been spelled out in the posts!

Let’s start with some observations:

Barrel is not consistent with timeline; it is a reproduction.

Rear sight was called out as a fake.

Buttplate is a reproduction.

I may have missed someone pointing it out, but the stock and mag catch are also suspect.

All of these parts were probably from the Orilla del Río, which is where they all belong in.

The receiver was also confirmed coming from the same place. As pointed out there is work on the dovetails.

The receiver I believe to be USGI. There are inconsistencies with the serial number. Instead of focusing on the serial number I focused on what the receiver is and where it belongs.

As Charlie pointed out the length of the slide channel is not consistent with early Inlands.

As Wayne pointed out early Inlands were reported with two periods between the CAL. .30 and this one is missing the period before 30

All of the answers can be found in CCNL 346 in Chris Albrights Inland First Block Update.

In this article Chris introduces Inland receiver “configurations” which is not to be confused with what we call receiver types (Spring tube vs drilled receiver)

Only two receiver configurations had the one notch.

Config 1 rec 17- 30,858

Config 2 rec 29,815- 54,050

Config 3 rec introduced the second slide notch and the earliest number reported is 51,613.

Page 5 of the article talks about the front ring. Based on reported information the second period seems to have dropped between the serial numbers 8,590 and 18,330. We need more reporting in this area!

The first observation of the period reappearing was at serial number 107,997 and was reported intermittently to serial number 205,355.

Page 4 of the article discusses the serial number size. In comparing the fonts on 92 they are a match to other early Inland serial numbers. I do not think the front ring and 92 were buffed off and restamped!

Getting back to the slide notch, known engineering and numbered experimental Inland carbines all had the short distance from the slide notch to the rear of the receiver. The slide notch was shortened, which made the distance longer to the rear, somewhere I believe in the 4-digit range.

Inland 105 has the short distance. It is highly unlikely in such a short spread (11-105) that there was a different length.

I will save some brain cells and say the receiver is consistent with a receiver made between the 8,590 and 18,330 range and as high as 54,050.

But I will narrow this down better, Remember I said I believe that the numbers 9 and 2 are legitimate. However, props go out to JonD for catching the work of both sides of the receiver next to the numbers.

If the receiver was a 3 or 5 digit carbine the numbers would not be centered. The receiver configuration is not consistent with a config one or two. This would mean that the receiver is a humped four digit.

Presenting Inland X92X! And this could be narrowed down to a possible 20 serial numbers in the

8920 – 9929 range

Props and thanks to all who played.