That sounds similar to Winchester's production practices, although their serial numbers, over the long range, do correlate rather well with dates.

I don't see how this real data is misleading. You can already see that serial number progression does not necessarily correlate with date progression. I've never seen a chart of this data. Perhaps Roy Jinks has been compiling a searcheable data chart, but I don't have access to that. I like to have data. A person who has data has more knowledge than a person who does not. I don't think this is a question of either/or .... either a person relies on urban stories about what S&W's manufacturing practices were but has zero data to back it up; or a person has lots of data but no concept of what S&W's manufacturing practices were (although the latter person could certainly infer what the practices were by looking at the data). Rather than an either/or situation, both data and historical accounts of what went on are important.

The chart already gives info that is consistent with your conjecture of what S&W's manufacturing processes were. If we could get at least a hundred data points here, we'd have a very interesting piece of information. It won't help the new fellow trying to date his gun, but it is useful for other things, at least to flesh out an idea of S&W's manufacturing processes and what years had more orders than other years, etc.

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Kirk