Winchester Model 36 serial number — why there isn’t one
The Winchester Model 36 is a single-shot, bolt-action smoothbore "garden gun" for 9mm rimfire shot cartridges, produced from 1920 to 1927 in a run of roughly 20,000 to 26,000.
- Produced:
- 1920–1927
- Action:
- bolt-action
The Model 36 has no serial number
Winchester never numbered the Model 36. Like its other low-priced single-shot .22s and utility shotguns, it left the factory with a model or caliber marking and patent dates on the barrel, but no serial. Federal law did not require serial numbers on rifles and shotguns until the Gun Control Act took effect in December 1968, and by then the Model 36 had been out of production for years. A Model 36 with no number is exactly as it left New Haven. Nothing has been removed.
Roughly 20,000 to 26,000 were made, depending on the reference.
A single-shot bolt-action smoothbore for 9mm rimfire Flobert shot or ball cartridges, cocked by hand with a knob. Winchester cataloged one configuration and named no variants.
There is no record to search and no factory letter to order. The Cody Firearms Museum, which issues Winchester factory letters, works from the factory’s serial-number records, and it cannot document a gun that never had a number.
If your Model 36 has a number on it
Numbers do turn up on these guns. Most were added after the gun left the factory: an owner’s identification number, a hardware store’s stock number, or an importer’s marking on a gun that traveled abroad and came back. Some are factory marks that are not serials, such as inspector or fitter stamps and, on several models, a two-digit year stamp hidden under the barrel. Patent dates on the barrel are mistaken for a serial number too. None of these can be looked up in any record.
How to date a Model 36 without a serial number
Only the production years, 1920–1927, place this model in time. No dated feature changes are documented well enough for us to publish, so we do not.