Weird 1917?

[storm896]

Hello all,
New here. I just recently became interested in the vintage Savage handguns made in Utica NY. Being from upstate NY they just peaked my interest because of the local history. Today I found some at a local gun shop and ran across this interesting 1917. Or what seems to be a 1917. I was wondering if anybody may have any insight to a few things that caught my eye. The first being the serial number. A picture of it can be found in the attached album. I inked out the last 2 digits, but they were in the same format as the 3 that is shown in the pic. The two other interesting things that I noticed that were not common with the 1917 model is the rounded hammer and the savage logo facing in the wrong direction. Both of these things are shown in the second pic of the album. Any help making any sense of this is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance
Here is the album: http://imgur.com/a/y0Sjc

[824tsv]

Thats an interesting looking 1917.
I can only address the grips. Bailey Brower shows a couple of examples in his book Savage Pistols, although I couldn't find any information as to why the differences of the left side grip logo. If you check the current listings on Gunbroker there are 2 examples shown (1-.32 1-.380) with your style of grip logo and a pair of grips with your style of logo. So maybe not as odd or rare as one may think. I'm interested to hear some comments about the serial#.

[storm896]

Thanks! So that is good to know. Hopefully someone has some info on the other few things. I am really fascinated by this one in particular because of all of these weird little inconsistencies.

[Mad Dog]

Can't make out the first letter, is it UD? I have a model 1915 with serial number starting MD. Talked with Bailey about it but he didn't have any insight about why it was like that.

[storm896]

It is a JD1. On yours that starts with MD, does it have the correct amount of numbers after it to fit into the standard serial number scheme?

[Mad Dog]

No, it's MD with three digits afterwards, also it's in .380 and should by rights end with a B but doesn't.

[storm896]

That makes this all more interesting then. My theory has been that possibly there was some sort of house supply for the workers. And they just numbered them on the right side of the frame there. Then as they took them home they stamped their initials in front of the number. This serial number is one of the main reasons I was intrigued by this piece. So your MD could be someone with the initials MD, my JD1 could be a case of more than 1 person having the initials JD. I wish there was a way to find out more about this. On yours does it look like a different tool was used to put the MD in? Or does it look the same as the numbers in it?

[Mad Dog]

The MD are twice as large as the numbers and not in line with them.

I had an idea it meant something like "military dept" but who knows.

I know when I talked with Bailey Brower about this one he said it would be useless getting it lettered as the ledgers wouldn't have anything like that in them.

The strange part is that even the breech plug is numbered the same way to the frame.