Quote:
I would imagine made in the first week of production.
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I guess I would be a little disappointed if I thought they could crank out 500 or more of these works of art in a week. You may be completely right, but by early 1904 they were up to the Bulgarian contract with serials of 20001-21000, which would imply about 20,000 guns in three years +/-, or about 130 per week at a constant rate.
Of course, there were other contract guns also running in production.
G&S project the following timeline by serial number:
Q1/1901 - Swiss Military 1-200 and Commercial 1-200
Q2/1901 - Swiss Military 200-400 and Commercial 200-400
Q2-3/1901 - Swiss Military 400-600 and Commercial 400-1000
Q3-4/1901 - Commercial 1000-5000
Q4/1901 - Swiss Military 600-1800 and 597E-610E
The 5,000 guns of the initial Swiss Military contract were not finished until 1904 (according to G&S). By the end of 1905, all of the Old Models were completed (30,000 or a little more) - in the first 5 years of production. This would support ~100 per week, but was backloaded to 1902-05 as they got better at it and numbered fewer parts.