A bit ago, a member here mentioned that you can pay Colt $25 to find out exactly when a specific rifle was manufactured.
Since the earliest SP1s are now hitting 50 years old, making them C&R eligible, and since collectors in some states can only have them once they've hit that magic age (because apparently a 1964 SP1 is somehow far less a threat to public safety than, say, a 1965 SP1), such knowledge might be valuable to some people.

As for me, PA doesn't sweat the C&R thing, but I was still interested in finding out when this one was born.  With a serial number in the very, very low 1800's (like, that third digit is "0" but don't tell anyone--we're supposed to keep these things secret for some reason), I knew it was a '64, but thought it would be interesting to know an actual date.  I figured if a few of us share this info, others would be able to at least approximate the manufacturing dates of their own rifles.

Anyway, I called Colt, paid with a credit card and maybe 3 weeks later, I got the following response on nice Colt letterhead:



It was nice of them to confirm that 1964 came before 1994, but what really interested me was that date.  December 22nd was a lot later in the year than I expected.  

Considering the holidays and weekends, there couldn't have been more than maybe 5(?) production days left in '64.
Now, I've heard many times that there were about 2500 SP1s manufactured that first year.  I'm wondering now if that number is too high.

Brother M1Sniper has blessed us on occasion with photos of his unfired, in the box, SP1 from '64.  That one is serial number 118x and (he's posted this info before so I'm hoping he won't mind my repeating it) his Colt letter says it was born on Nov 16,1964.  Figure there's "about" 620 rifles between his and mine...and (if they ran the SP1 line 5 days a week) there were fewer than 25 workdays between 11/16 and 12/22...so that indicates a production rate of what, around 25 rifles/day?

That seems low to me.
Maybe they produced SP1s in bunches?

I'm really curious about how many they cranked out in those last few days of 1964.

If anyone has any more data points--birthdays for specific SNs--please share!

Very nice Olgunner. No sweat on posting my rifles info,,her B-day was Nov.16,1964 and left the Colt nest on Nov 20,1964.Thanks for posting your info. I paid for the $100 dollar "archival" letter which describes what characteristics she came with and also where the rifle was shipped to on Nov 20,1964. I'd love to see what else is on your letter?? If you'd care to share via email,you have mine,,and I'll send a copy of mine to you if wanted..

Gunner,

This post interests me.  I have S/N 00920.. You've helped me pin down what half of '94! mine was made!  (the middle half!)  I paid $225 for the rifle, about 1975 or so.

Ray

Question, Did Colt ever make an Early AR15 SP1 with Blue furniture?

I have seen one like this, back in the mid '80's, and the owner still had the original box and paperwork.

For $25, what I showed above is all you get, I'm afraid.
Above that paragraph is my mailing address and below it is a Colt logo.

I hope you get more than that for $100, but I've always wondered how much detail they can give--particularly on a 50 year old rifle.  
I've seen letters on older guns--SAAs, for instance--but there usually isn't much detail unless the piece was some sort of special order.

Will they send a letter like that for a 1978? I been wanting to frame mine a letter from colt would be nice.

I'm sure they will, but if you want something to frame, the historical letter looks much prettier.
For $25, you get the birthdate on Colt letterhead:



But for $100, you get at least a little more detail and a much fancier letter (example I lifted from the web--not mine, unfortunately):

I started that thread a while back.  My SP1 #006xx isn't quite 50 yet.......................................but it is getting very close.

I have all the parts to rebuild an early SP1 exactly correct, I just wish I could find a 1964 receiver. If anyone runs across one please IM me......I will restore it 100% and get the proper Colt documentation, so I can write it in my C&R book.

A three-digit rifle in the 600-range is still not 50 as of late September??

This is interesting since we know the SP1 design was likely complete in '63--at least, if we accept that the 25 rifles under #100 (or at least their receivers) were manufactured in '63.  (Those were the ones set aside for dignitaries in the company.)
I'm wondering if they intentionally delayed the start of semi-auto production (small as it was) to focus on early mil production.  I don't think the '64 GI orders were that large, but what was their production capacity in those days?

Hmmm.  Let's do some wild-ass guesswork and call Kurt's rifle "650," and let's say it was born on October 1st (as far as I know, these are not true--just approximations).  
If, as I've often heard, there were 2,500 '64 SP1s, it would mean there were 1850 rifles manufactured in that last quarter.
Now the average quarter contains 63 work days, but the 4th Q includes a couple recognized holidays, so we'll call it 60 work days.
1850 rifles divided by 60 days equals roughly 31 rifles/day.

Now, as I mentioned above, we can estimate about 25 rifles a day between the births of M1sniper's and mine, so the 31 per day isn't terribly far off.
But if we call it an even 30/day, and there were only 5 or 6 work days between mine and the end of the year...we'd expect a total production of fewer than 2,000 rifles.

So let's adjust the guesswork above.  Let's go with 2,000 rifles minus 650 equals 1350, divided by 60 production days in the quarter...equals 22.5 rifles/day (even closer to the best estimated rate between M1Sniper's and mine).

Bottom line--I've got to believe the total number of 1964 SP1s is around 2,000.

To take this a step further (or backwards)...
2000 rifles at 22.5/day would require ~89 workdays.  By my "calculations," that would put the first day of SP1 production sometime around 25 AUG 64.

Then again...I was an English major and numbers make my head hurt.  What the hell do I know?

...but if I could afford to satisfy the idle curiosity, I'd spend another $25 and ask Colt for the birthdate of number 101.

I really need to call Jack (original owner of 118x) and pick his brain more about his visit to Colts line the day he ordered the rifle. I've posted this before,he worked for IBM at the time and was sent to Colt on business. He was asked if he wanted to view the assembly line, being former soldier in the US Army,and a collector (and very close personal friend of George Numrich I might add) ,of coarse he said yes. The building he toured was a long building with a center hall.The center hall didn't have walls but 2 chain link type fences.As he strolled he was told military contract rifles were being assembled on one side,the "new civilian" SP1 rifles were being assembled on the other side. At the end of the building the tour guide asked him if he wanted to check out one of these "new civilian,semi auto rifles" He was handed one, and that was all she wrote .Altho not allowed to purchase and take it home that day, he placed his order, along with order for the Made in US scope and had them sent to his local GS. When received, he never fired it ,left it all "as came" from the factory, never removed the tape that held the cleaning rods together, never installed the sling, never mounted the scope,never removed the tag tied to the trigger guard with the info about the rifle including the $189.95 price,, ,NEVER fired that rifle. He did end up buying a 2nd one in the 24,xxx range,,that one he fired.

Rob,

I remember a conversation we had about how Colt just put up a fence down the center of the assembly line and military M16's were being produced on one side and SP1 on the other side of the Fence. We didn't get into names, but I was quite amazed at how little effort was made to ensure parts did NOT get mixed up. I'm surprised there aren't more SP1 rifles with the ability to fire full auto as they left Colt's factory.

 

650 is very, very close.  The party is tomorrow

SP1Colt posted in another thread

SP00442
September 23, 1964

http://www.gunpartscorp.com/pub/files/ColtAR15SP1LetterofAuthenticity.pdf

442 = 9/23
650ish = 9/25

about 100 a day.

Not quite.  That date, 23 SEP 64, was the shipment date for #442--not production date.

M1Sniper tells us his was manufactured on 16 NOV and shipped 20 NOV.  If 442 was also manufactured 4 workdays before it shipped, we can guess at a production date of 19 SEP 64.  That would mean 208 rifles (between 442 and 650), over 6 days...or between 33 and 34 rifles/day.  (Faster than the 22.5/day average I estimated above, but still nowhere near the production that would be needed to get  from my 1,80X to 2,500 in ~5 workdays.)

This opens the question of how frequently and regularly rifles shipped.  To maintain the 22.5 rifles/day pace I guessed at earlier, #442 would have been manufactured 7 work days before it shipped.  That doesn't seem likely.

good catch on the production/shipment date.

what happens if there is a parts shortage later on in the production line?  for example, if they were waiting on a batch of bolts they wouldn't shut down the entire line so would they keep building as complete as they could and just stack them at the end in a pile that's short bolts and when the bolts come in, they all get the same production date?  or is production date set as when the lower was complete?

even with the scenario above, it doesn't make 700 rifles in 5 working days sound really feasible.  that's a lot of rifles to have to store.

That would be a good question for someone with insider knowledge.

Rob,

Did you get your letter yet? If so would you mind blanking out your personal info and showing me what's included in the $100 letter? Connecticut honors the C&R status on SPI's and I'm curious to see if it's worth it to spend the $25 or $100 to verify C&R status.

Interesting thread.  I believe ex-employee told me 6 -10 assembly work stations on the civillian SP-1 side and pretty sure there is a pic floating around to confirm this. I know I've seen it before. I
didn't ask if some only did uppers and some only did lowers but it only make sense.  Didn't really care at the time.  I can build 8-10 Ar's a day,  function test,  headspace and clean and I'm probably as or more mechanical than most and try not to scratch anything. I'm guessing with work ethic of old and everything all layed out they could easily top my numbers.  If just doing uppers or lowers figure 30 minutes each for lowers and 10 minutes for upper not working very hard but many times that also includes cleaning the parts for me.  What if parts are all cleaned or simply oiled and ready to install.  One could turn them out pretty quickly doing it repetively all the time.

Figure if each individual only did 8-10 rifles daily with 10 stations in production that would be 80-100 rifles daily in full production mode if parts were available. Granted I don't do the same thing over and over day after day,  still I've put together more than enough AR's to know how long it takes if everything goes well and everything doesn't always go well.  If 2500 were built annually that's really only 25 days of actual assembly the way I've figured it. Rest would be parts gathering,  , machining, coating / finish,  bolt carrier assembly etc.  Then to packaging and shipping phase. Guessing if one could assemble a semi auto they could easily assemble a FA or vice versa.

I've actually seen more pics of FA side of production than civillian side and they had carts full of the stuff at different stages of mfg leading me to believe it was similar to an assembly line production from work station to station.  Throw in wartime mfg of 100K plus units annually and FA side would have required many more stations and workers.  Wonder if we could find out how many employees for each department semi and FA side and figure realistically from physical employee count. 100K rifles annually with 250 working days is 400 rifles daily. At 10 a day that would require 40 stations just for assembly. 20 daily only 20 stations.  The stations I've seen in pics I'd say were approximately 10x10 or such possibly a little smaller as pic is in memory.  That would still require 200 linear ft of warehouse space for 20,  10 ft  stations.

Even with automated shipping equipment I rarely did more than 50 boxes daily more like 20-25 on average (BS'ing around also)when packaging racing carburetor's for shipment so I'm guessing neither did they with yesterdays antiquated packaging and shipping systems.  Wouldn't have been profitable to pay too many to do this portion of the job IMO.  Probably take at least a day and probably two days to test them,  clean and package one day of assembly so that would make 4 days from born on dating to actual shipping pretty realistic. As stated above a weekend would throw off dating pretty quickly.

Sure would be nice to talk with a couple employee's from back in the day now that I have an interest and know what questions to ask.  Old boss actually worked for Colt from late 50's into early 70's before being canned.   He'd spit this stuff off daily until most wouldn't even consider buying a Colt anything.  Keep in mind no automated anything existed at this time but even pics of Springfield Armory or even Tredegar Iron Wroks for that matter from Civil War times showed a whole  lot of very busy people. Granted even mass produced the rifles required much more finesse to assemble than a M-16 or semi equilivant.  The pics I've seen of Colt plant  didn't really look that busy but plant could have been shut down, lunchtime , etc also.

The inconsistency in production was probably based on actual orders received and parts availability same as today. Hard to assemble carbs without base plates or assemble rifles without receivers or barrels.  Think of the madhouse around 1967-68 into 71ish.  Things would have been rather calm in comparrison in 1964. What 15K model 02's. That would only be 60 daily if given a whole year..

Again thanks for sharing birthday.  Wonder if someone like Jesse from J&T or Badhazzard? from Spikes could enlighten us on daily production numbers from top flight assembly line in one of today's mfg facilities for comparrison.  What's Pete selling RRA today advertised up to 6 weeks wait,  haven't checked in a while,  would almost thing they are caught up.  Parts order usually takes 10 days from order to delivery in VA..  Granted not Colt by any means but probably run very efficiently none the less. How about turning out weapons in WWII?  How many garands 3-4 million or such in 6 years.  Grease guns 7 million or so in even less time? A whole lot more than the M-16 in a much tighter time frame.  What was GM in 2-3 years 500K plus? H&R 250K in same time frame. Bet those were some busy production facilities also. Probably working at least two shifts to double production around the clock.

Again thanks for sharing.

OK, we've had a few people chime in with info in other threads, so let's consolidate what we know...

SP00323 shipped on 21 SEP 64
SP00442 shipped on 23 SEP 64
SP00650 manufactured on 25 SEP 64
SP0118X manufactured 16 NOV 64, shipped 20 NOV 64
SP0180x manufactured 22 DEC 64

What have I missed?

I'm going to call Colt tomorrow, I will add my info when I receive the letter, maybe this info could be added to the data base