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Rockrz wrote:

jimlongley wrote:Those dates are patent dates, the only way to determine the date of manufacture is to look it up by serial number.

Is it safe, or is it a good idea, to go ahead and post the serial
number so somebody can seee if they can tell what year it was made?

I'd be interested in knowing what year it was produced

I would not post the serial number, there are a couple of things you can do though. First, try to contact S&W and see if the historical department can help you. Failing that, you can contact a firearms assessor or dealer in older guns, and see if they can tell you. Or, you could do an internet search and see if anyone has posted a list of them by serial number and manufacture date. I know the approximate dates my M1 Carbine and M1 Garand were manufactured from online lists.

Those dates are patent dates, the only way to determine the date of manufacture is to look it up by serial number.

The .38 S&W cartridge is much different than the .38 Special, but that in itself doesn't make the gun old. Since the patent dates show 1914, then the gun was obviously made after that, but notice should be taken that the .38 S&W cartridge was black powder and, generally, guns designed for shooting black powder cartridges have a marked tendency to disassemble catastrophically when subjected to the higher pressures of smokeless powder.

It also helps to remember that not all .45s are .45 in diameter, which just adds more to the confusion.

.45ACP is nominally .451 inches in diameter, while a .45 Colt (there's no such thing as a LONG Colt) may be .454, and a .45 Schofield slug will rattle down either bore at .45.

There is a pretty good list of cartridges on Wikipedia, with links to the stats for them.