Grooved receiver

[dbldblu]

I recently picked up a Marlin 81DL which was determined to be C&R eligible by certain features. It does not have a grooved receiver which has me wondering if this can be used to date .22's? Does anyone know when they started offering grooved receivers? The Mossberg 146a was made 1954 to 1958; my example has a grooved receiver. Does anyone have a .22 with grooved receiver known to be older than that?

 

[PetahW]

AFAIK, most of the big makers (Winchester, Marlin, Remington, etc) started to groove .22RF receivers in/about 1954, since that is about when inexpensive scopes with clamp-on mounts first became widely available to the general public.

Prior to that, although there were some scopes around, etc, they were new back then, and not popular yet.

When some makers, like Winchester, offered a scope as a factory option before then, they simply packaged a scope & mount with the rifle, leaving mounting to the end user.

.