The best way to do it is to take all of the work sheets, symbols, Cody letters and the rest of all the goobly gobbly bullcrap and throw them out the window.
You really can not count on any of it to be accurate. I have the worksheets for two of my 21s and they don't tell you anything. Most of the things they did to my guns aren't even on them. The Cody letters don't tell you much more. If the gun wasn't ordered, I have the feeling they would put on whatever was laying around the shop instead of paying any attention to a work order. That's just my opinion of course, but there have been a lot of weird things happen over the years as far as codes and symbols go. The main thing is that if you like the gun and want to pay the price, then buy it. A 16 gauge is pretty rare and a skeet grade is even rarer. And both the buttstock and forearm should be stamped. The buttstock should be stamped under the bottom tang toward the back. But who's to say that if it was lunchtime at the Winchester plant, back sixty years ago and the guy who was supposed to stamp the stock was hungry, he didn't just grab his lunch sack and leave for lunch after passing the stock on down the line and forgetting to stamp it? Good chance that happened. Or maybe someone wanted to put a different buttstock on it and just sanded down the old numbers and putting a different stock on it? It is really a coing toss with these old guns.
