olderthansome wrote on Aug 25^th, 2019 at 4:15pm:

How will you address receivers marked only "1895" or "1896"?  Are they going to be considered "Models" or "Variants", like Flayderman, or something else?  I find that Mallory's serial number lists apparently ignore the 1895 date on many carbines and lists them  only as "M96C".  For me, that could be a problem in evaluating individual pieces and maybe even for verifying historical information. I wish there was a better way to deal with the information.  I think spreadsheets are inherently limiting if trying to find significant deviations from a norm.  A true database may be better as it will, I think, support a search on almost any term or phrase and allow additional information to be added or changed to an item, but the size requirements of the server and software are enormous.  Nevertheless, you've done some work which is a lot more that I have done and the beginnings are hopeful.  Thank you for your efforts, truly!

I don't think entering dates will be a problem. There are only six possibilities: 1894, 1895, 1896, M1896, M1898, M1899. The 1898/99 overstrikes are SO scarce that they could be handled under "Notes".

Yes, a full-blown relational database would be the best ultimate format, but that is a LOT of work. IIRC, beginning with entering data into a carefully-organized spreadsheet should not be a waste of time as I believe it could later be ported into a database if that were later deemed essential.