THE 1970 JIANSHE /26\ 1.5m - "The Missing Link"
Dubbed "the missing link" as this year at Jianshe /26\ we found the first evidence of the year indicator regardless to how many actual digits are within the serial. This enabled us to apply the same dating rule to all other later arsenals enabling us to date almost all of them. Very similar to the 1961 6m, all serials observed thus far have been sub 20k indicating maybe 2-3 weeks of production compared to similar era production numbers. If you guys have been following, these rifles used to be an enigma as they are obviously NOT a 1956 '1m" rifle clearly by all of their late features. RM and I brainstormed a bit on these rifles and then it hit us... They are ALL 1.5. Not 1.1 or 1.2 or 1.7 etc but ALL 1.5. This is a CLEAR indication that the first digit/digits are simply a year designator and this same rule can be applied to almost every standard Chinese sks produced. When you compare these 1.5 (15th year of production) features to the other known /26\ rifles, its obvious they are mirror images of the 13 and 14m. The 14th year was NOT the last year of production at Jianshe. That being said, all numerals after the year designation on the 15th year indicate sub 20k produced going off our current (small) list of observed rifles. Compared to the production totals in the years just prior to 1970, the 20k 15th year current totals indicate just a few weeks worth of production. This is strong evidence as to why they dropped a digit from the total serial in this year. There was likely no need to waste time stamping digits on thousands of rifles that was not needed.