Safefoods

[Safefoods]

I have a Colt 1911 38 Super Mfg 1931. It has a "60" marking on the right trigger guard and a "1" over"VP" in a triangle on the safety side. Anyone???

[Scott Gahimer]

I assume you wish to know what the marks are?

The 60 is the Colt factory assembler's mark who assembled the pistol. The 1 is the mark of the Colt factory inspector who inspected the pistol after assembly. The VP is the Verified Proof mark, which was the last mark applied to the pistol, after it had assembled, inspected and proof fired.
There were various assemblers and inspectors at the Colt factory. Each had a stamp assigned to them.

[Tom]

Any records kept that correlates a name with these assemblers and inspectors?

[wichaka]

Colt has records, Clawsons books have all that info. too.

Oh, and one other thing..............


:wl:

[Scott Gahimer]

The information on the Colt factory assemblers and inspectors is incomplete. Clawson lists some, based on the available information at Colt's.

The assembler and inspection marks were moved to the sides of the trigger guard beginning in 1919, where they continued to be marked through 1970.

One thing to bear in mind is that an assembler or inspector's assigned marking was sometimes re-assigned to someone else, if for no other reason...job promotions or re-assignments, vacations, death or retirement.

I'm not aware of any complete listing of all the inspector and assembler marks with the dates and names of those assigned. The purpose of those markings was for in-house use in quality control, and served a purpose only for a limited period of time.