Savage 99 First Rifle?
- Thread starter OldSavage
- Start date
The first centrefire I shot when I was about 12 was my grandfather's 99 in .300 Savage. I now own a nice old one in .250-3000, and it'll never go. All I've done to it is throw a tang sight on it and tighten the takedown threads. Beautiful rifles; I wish I could afford the money and storage space to collect them. I used to have six in different calibres, but I'm down to one.
In my first post I stated I had never owned a 99 Savage, but I have to add a footnote.
Here is a picture of one in 300 calibre that I once bought, but before I even fired a shot out of it, a son glommed onto it and will never part with it!
Of course I should have been leery, forty years ago I took him, a young boy, on a deer hunt. He had my pre 64 Winchester 30-30, made a nice one shot kill on a buck mule deer, and he has had that Model 94 ever since!
Here is a picture of one in 300 calibre that I once bought, but before I even fired a shot out of it, a son glommed onto it and will never part with it!
Of course I should have been leery, forty years ago I took him, a young boy, on a deer hunt. He had my pre 64 Winchester 30-30, made a nice one shot kill on a buck mule deer, and he has had that Model 94 ever since!
In my first post I stated I had never owned a 99 Savage, but I have to add a footnote.
Here is a picture of one in 300 calibre that I once bought, but before I even fired a shot out of it, a son glommed onto it and will never part with it!
Of course I should have been leery, forty years ago I took him, a young boy, on a deer hunt. He had my pre 64 Winchester 30-30, made a nice one shot kill on a buck mule deer, and he has had that Model 94 ever since!
I don't know why some people think the 99 is an ugly rifle.
They are very attractive.
The reason I sold the 4 99s I had is that I used to be quite good at metal engraving, stock carving and checkering which I did mostly as winter projects to drive away the doldrums and by the time the winter was over the 99 I was working on was a work of art.
I'd get offered considerably more than what I paid for the gussied up gun and like they say money talked and the gun walked out the door under someone else's arm.
Yah, it's nice buying a used gun where you have to fix and/or replace EVERYTHING.
There have been a few good ones in Epps over the past year.
What happened to the rifle?
Yah, it's nice buying a used gun where you have to fix and/or replace EVERYTHING.
There have been a few good ones in Epps over the past year.
What gets me is the insane pricing some folks are asking for these regardless of the rifles condition.
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I've read up on this and Savage did indeed address the question of reissuing the 99. They said the old tooling was worn out after 100 years of service. It would've cost far to much to repair or engineer a new set of tooling for the 99. It requires some very specific machines. So the pricing would likely be exorbitant. I suspect Winchester and Marlin have been upgrading their machinery continuously, which is why we often see quality issues in new versions of the 94 and 336. Furthermore, the Savage 99 at its best was a precision instrument made by highly skilled craftsmen. Is Savage these days willing to pay for that sort of expertise in their shop? I doubt it in current economic times. Savage is known these days as affordable quality. This is incongruous with the quality required of the 99.
Ruger managed to redesign the Savage 99 into a very handy package—the 96 carbine. The lever clearly showed it's lineage as well as the rotary magazine. The good thing about that carbine is the detachable mag, which Savage never seemed to be able to solve adequately. That said, it was still a pistol caliber carbine, not a full-power rifle. You could load the .44 mag up, but it still won't be as effective on larger game like moose, elk, and bear.
I'd love to see a proper reissue of 1899 with correct wood and steel, but I would bet that compromises would abound. So I'm happy to love that rifle as it is.
Ruger managed to redesign the Savage 99 into a very handy package—the 96 carbine. The lever clearly showed it's lineage as well as the rotary magazine. The good thing about that carbine is the detachable mag, which Savage never seemed to be able to solve adequately. That said, it was still a pistol caliber carbine, not a full-power rifle. You could load the .44 mag up, but it still won't be as effective on larger game like moose, elk, and bear.
I'd love to see a proper reissue of 1899 with correct wood and steel, but I would bet that compromises would abound. So I'm happy to love that rifle as it is.
My Dad bought his new 99F featherlight in .300Sav. off of the shelf in Timmins, ON. from a hardware store in 1960. It is one of the smoothest actions I have ever had the opportunity to shoot! I just detail stripped and cleaned it and it is in VERY good shape. Only gets pulled out of the safe once a year for deer season and sometimes not even fired, then oiled and put back. The bore looks new as does the wood with the exception of a few bumps here and there. It is also very accurate and will shoot 1.5" groups with ease at 100 yards.
Ian
Ian
IDK about that as tooling was exspensive in 1899 and VERY labour intensive and yet they somehow managed to thrive.
With today's technology and machinery it should be far easier to crank these rifles with good fit and finish at a reasonable cost.
I suspect it's more a matter of a lack of will to do so on Savages part.
It's the sad fate of many of the once great US gun innovators...
Follow the herd in the race to the bottom in building low budget clone bolt guns.
Wait until patents run out and 3D medal printing gets more advanced and common.
IDK about that as tooling was exspensive in 1899 and VERY labour intensive and yet they somehow managed to thrive.
With today's technology and machinery it should be far easier to crank these rifles with good fit and finish at a reasonable cost.
I suspect it's more a matter of a lack of will to do so on Savages part.
It's the sad fate of many of the once great US gun innovators...
Follow the herd in the race to the bottom in building low budget clone bolt guns.
Wait until patents run out and 3D medal printing gets more advanced and common.
You may be right. I'm not sure. This was the rationale from Savage when they polled customers for a new rifle design last year. It may be the uniqueness of the tooling that makes the 1899 an issue, who knows?
They would never release it in the Savage calibers anyway, so it'd be a non-starter for me. I think the fact that Savage had so many interesting and effective cartridges made the 1899 a successful rifle. It wasn't till the 300 Savage became so popular that the other manufacturers caught on. But if they're just going to make 99s in 223 and 308, there are plenty of other rifles in those chamberings. If you wanted a 22 Savage Hi power in 1920, you had to by a Savage 1899 rifle. There was no other choice. But those cartridges have seen their day, for better or worse. Thus the dear old 1899 has as well. It won't stop me from enjoying the elderly rifles, though.
Here's a question: if Savage was willing to reissue the 1899, what calibers would you want to see?
BUM,
you need one.
not in 308 but in .300 Savage.
my take down one even well worn out is staying with us don't even ask ...
Gave it to a local gunsmith and had it fixed up.
Then sold it to a farmer for shooting pest fur.
Let him know the low down of it and he seemed fine with it.
I told him he knows where to find me if he wasn't happy with it.
BigUglyMan
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
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People think that modern tech should make manufacturing easy and often it does. But look at the Ruger Gold Label debacle and you see that some things just can't be replicated at a competitive price point. And Savage has branded themselves in the "Economy" rifle segment. How many people do you really think would buy a modern repro (likely full of "improvements") of the 99 at $1000 a copy?
Just bought my first one. Dates to 1926, the wood is trash, too many holes, but damn the barrel in .250-300 Savage is excellent. Just have it torn down to clean up and ye gods, what a complex piece of machining! From some old photos it seems like they were the latest and greatest in the 1920s.
Pity they don't make one in 7.62x39.
Pity they don't make one in 7.62x39.
Pity they don't make one in 7.62x39.
Why? So everyone can shoot corrosive surplus through it?
On a more constructive note, I'd be pretty tempted to jump on a new one chambered in something like 260 Rem or similar.
It is indeed very complex. But it was designed in the 1890s, so that sort of complexity was common. Even the Winchester 94 isn't the easiest thing in the world to work with. But you could shoot Spitzer bullets in any Savage 1899 safely. This really was an improvement over the tube mags of most Winchesters. I have a hunch John Browning caught wind of the Savage and set to work on the 1895 as a reaction.
On top of all of this, the 1899 was always a laser-beam. That seems to have gone a long way for hunters and shooters in the early 20th century. The Savage cartridges were absolutely cutting-edge, as I've pointed out before. If you wanted the absolute cat's meow rifle and cartridge, the Savage 1899 was it. Remember, Mausers wouldn't make inroads to North America till after the First World War. Nowadays we can't imagine a hunting rifle without thinking Mauser action and cartridge design. But Savage was on the leading edge of the cartridge and action game in North America.
