Heyjerr -
Regarding this portion of one of your posts: "On mine, the entire sight mount is not perfectly level to start with when viewed from the front."
I have a pretty decent 1915 LP08 and I can not see that the rear sight mount is not perfectly level to start with. It looks level to me. (?)
The bluing on my rear sight and rear sight base matches the rest of the gun, except for the top side of the little piece that slides up and down the 100 to 800 meter scale. The blueing on this top side of this particular piece is a slightly "bluer blue" (for want of a better description). However, since this little part is serially number to the rest of the gun and the font is perfectly matched to all the other small serially numbered parts, it was definitely this way when it left DWM.
One thing I do notice in your photograph of the two-digit serial number on the right side of this little sliding piece is the quality of the stamping. Is that a "19"? It looks like the "1" and the "9" do not line up very evenly. And the "1" (if that is what it is) seems more deeply struck than the "9".
On my example, this two-digit is very neat, perfectly lined up and perfectly struck. ("86" in the case of my example)
Could it be that on your example this part has been re-stamped to match the rest of the gun? Or another possiblity might be that at this late point in the war, the quality of the stampings was deteriorating due to the logistical exigencies of the war. I do not know.
At least on my example, when the rear sight is in its fully down position, everything seems to be perfectly level.
The photographs that you took to show the difference between the height of the pin on the left side as compared to the height of the pin on the right side are very good. Mine look exactly the same way.
The main difference between my 1915 example and your 1917 example should be that the 1915 has the fine tuning adjustment screws on both the rear and the front sight.
Hope this helps.
Mauser720 - Ron
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