Certain steel firearms will respond better in magnetic particle serial number recovery than
others. Based on a very limited sample, most of the firearms appear to fall into the range of
“highly likely” for a successful recovery action, although a method of pre-screening a firearm to
predict its suitability for the test is not currently possible. However, it seems most firearms have
the right kind of material properties required for a successful test. The recovery of serial
numbers will be dependent on other factors also, but it would thus seem quite reasonable to
submit steel firearms to this test, making sure one uses proper technique as described in this
paper. By doing so, one could expect very good results for the recovery of obliterated serial