i don't know any website where you can track serial numbers. I got lucky on this one because of the man's name. Unrelated, but related, is a k98mauser that was a russian capture. I normally won't touch a military to refurbish, except to stabilize. This mauser had blood rust on the area around the chamber and ring. The russians dip parked it, and put some type of horrible finish on the wood. I couldn't stand it, and with due apologies to the guy that leaked on it, i got rid of the russian finish on the metal and wood, and got rid of the pits. It looks about what it would look like in the late 30's which was its manufacture date. The somme is an interesting period, in 141 days over a million men wounded or dead, about 250thousand british dead. On the first day of the somme 19000 british troops were killed, it puts normandy into perspective. I often tell people collecting these things the true interest is the history behind them. a couple of projects to do are some remington u.s. army rolling blocks that came off one of the local apache tribal lands. If they could only talk.
what i have done so far on the revolver is worthwhile. His name is on several honor rolls including in glasgow, they had his date of death wrong. I wrote to them explaining that, got an email today, and were correcting the records. That was worth something.