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There were several variations of the Benjamin model 397. Crosman Corp owns the Benjamin line of air guns I suggest you see the following web page to get your answer. https://support.crosman.com/hc/en-us
It was made between 1991 -1993It was made between 1991 -1993
There are 4 different versions of the Benjamin 397. See the attached link. You can download the owners manual and the parts manual for your rifle. It will show you how it is assembled.
This is a very perplexing question, because there are 5 different versions of model 397 on the Crosman web page ( Crosman owns Benjamin and Sheridan air rifles.) My catalogue list them as models 397, S397, 397C, G397 and GS397. It look like they all started around 1992 - 93 year. But I can not find a model 397P. See the link below for the owners manual for all the 397 models