CodyT, you got a great rifle there. Thanks for posting the pics.

Whig, all I have is the Joe Poyer book 2nd Edition. Pages 39 and 40 explain the round versus square cleaning rod fill. The rounded was used in the unissued stocks around 1896/1897. These would be mostly the "magazine rifles" 5MadFarmer written about. The model year was dropped off the designation due to having both 1892 parts and 1896 parts.

CodyT's rifle is a relatively low serial number and would have been a totally M1892 rifle and was most likely issued and used before 1896. Rifles such as that would have had the edges of the cleaning rod channel dented and chipped. So when the Armory updated these rifles to M1896 that had been in use they milled out a wider channel, which was squared off. This started happening in 1900. Below is from one of my earlier posts as I was trying to find out how my rifle came to its present configuration.

In researching the "Expenditure at the Springfield Armory " reports, the following was found:

Fiscal year ending 6/30/1897 (as seen in the post above),
    3,508 magazine rifles altered to model of 1896 with model of 1892 extractors.
    2,800 magazine rifles, model of 1892, altered to model of 1892, second pattern.

Fiscal year ending 6/30/1898,
   No mention of model of 1892 alterations.

Fiscal year ending 6/30/1899,
    Report could not be found.

Fiscal year ending 6/30/1900,
    1,588 altered to model of 1896.

Fiscal year ending 6/30/1901 (as found in Chief of Ordnance Report),
    6,123 altered to model of 1896.

Fiscal year ending 6/30/1902,
    5,420 altered to model of 1896.

Fiscal year ending 6/30/1903,
    No alterations of model of 1892 shown.

So my guess was that CodyT's rifle was returned to the Armory after 1900.

You can review my earlier post for more of this information. See the link below. It is rather lengthy as I was discovering things from other forum members and did a little research myself.

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