#Mauser rifle serial number lookup full#

By looking at the diffraction patterns from many grains in the test metal, the scientists identified a trail of altered grains that essentially revealed the sanded-away XвЂ™s.

This process allowed the researchers to determine whether a grainвЂ™s crystalline order had been jostled from a violent event such as a blow from a symbol-bearing die or a shot of heat from a laser. The resulting pattern of вЂњbackscatteringвЂќ electrons from each grain is known as a diffraction pattern.

Looking at the metal through an electron microscope, they scanned the grains to record how the electrons bounced away and scattered. To test whether they could reconstruct a thoroughly erased number in a piece of metal by examining grains with their EBSD technique, White and Keller punched some XвЂ™s into stainless-steel test strips and then ground the symbols away. Look closely enough inside each grain and you will see a crystalline arrangement of atoms and notice that the orientation of the crystals in adjacent grains is like clashing sets of stripes running at different angles from each other. It is this trail of damage that White and Keller can find using EBSD equipment.ДЄlmost all metals are composed of grains that pack together the way a 3-D jigsaw puzzle would. It is possible to scratch off those numerals and letters, but the mechanical or laser energy it takes to embed the number into the gunвЂ™s metal leaves a hidden record of damage around and beneath each digit.

#Mauser rifle serial number lookup full#

While the method, which uses an electron microscope to examine atoms in metal, still requires refining, NIST materials scientists Ryan White and Robert Keller say it should be capable of restoring a full serial number, even in such difficult cases as the Mossberg shotgun, in about an hour.ДЇederal law requires gun manufacturers to stamp, etch or otherwise imprint a unique serial number on every firearm they produce. Using a technique called electron backscatter diffraction, or EBSD, researchers at the Boulder, Colo., campus of the National Institute of Standards and Technology have been developing a novel way to bring back to life numbers that have been completely sanded away. вЂњOnly two of the seven serial number characters could be restoredвЂќ by his usual acid-etching techniques, Klees said, which meant police had to do a time-consuming search of gun-theft reports and interviews with victims to establish the weaponвЂ™s ownership.ДЄn alternative process under development since 2013 may fix this problem in the future. So the police sent the shotgun to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and ExplosivesвЂ™ National Laboratory in Beltsville, where Gregory Klees, the labвЂ™s go-to guy when it comes to the forensic science of un-erasing serial numbers, knew he had a challenge on his hands. The gunвЂ™s serial number, a forensic science staple for tracing guns, had been ground away. Several months ago, undercover police in Western Maryland bought a Mossberg shotgun, Model 500A, from a local drug dealer.