Been trying to get back to this all day...
Just throwing out some comments. Still trying to adjust my thinking on the subject.
Yep, these newspaper articles bring up a lot of possibilities.
The transition musket (whatever we are going to call it) now has a 1899 style bolt. During the test it had an 1895 style bolt. Correct? The bolt would have been one of a kind which means that a replacement was made for it at a later time or that the 1899 bolt originated because of changes to this rifle.
It
purportedly had an 1895 bolt. The only reference to that is by Bethel Burton (a competitor) in his complaint letter in the paper that Gene referenced. Now, was he referencing the gun that was in the trial, or was he referencing the carbine that was shown to the commission, or was he referencing the sporting arms that were being sold?
So that's 1 strike against it being the pre-1899 transition musket. I'll keep an eye open for that in anything else I run across.
There was a comment about the Savage ammo being loaded with just 30 gr. of powder vs. the required 36 gr. The Savage .303 was factory loaded with 30 gr. of powder at that time. Could also just mean that Savage was using lighter load .30-40's.
My earlier comments on the NY Guard Trial rifles originated from a letter from JTC in reference to 1895-D, 3351 which is one of the converted muskets like the one Mad-Dog has. Acceptance was 2/14/1896, no ship date. The letter states: "The remaining (log) entry shows this rifle to be a rare "military" version. Sometime ago a search of the Model 1895 ledger book was made for various serial numbers of the military models recorded. the tally of the various numbers yielded that a total of 100 military versions were made at Marlin. The breakdown shows 96 regular full stock models and 4 were listed as military carbines. These rifles were of course for the New York Militia Trials of 1896".
There are three muskets, that I know of, including Mad Dogs that have been reworked from there original configuration. Mad Dog's, unlike the #3351 musket has a 12/1896 acceptance (later than the NY 1896 Trials) and a 9/1898 ship date.
In copies of a few 1895 log sheets I count 10 other muskets all accepted between 11/30/1896 and 1/9/1897. There are 6 of these with readable ship dates and they are all in the Sep to Nov of 1898. Were they shipped as reworked rifles as Mad Dogs? Were they returned trials muskets (what trial?) that was salvaged like with the Savage .45's. Or just non-sellable inventory?
None of the above answers anything. Just posted to add pieces to the puzzle. I think I might have lead David down the wrong path on this subject and if my thinking was wrong then I'm the one that made the error in David's book.
One possibility of the 100 military guns is that they were ordered by Arthur W. Savage just to have on hand to show to potential buyers rather than being actual trial guns. The original Marlin order was supposedly 10,000 guns - so having 1% of the order be military arms isn't too crazy given Arthur's urge to sell to that market.
As to only one gun being submitted: I've been seeing between all of the newspaper articles and Gene's find references to just "gun", as though a singular firearm was the only one at the trial. Sometimes the words "guns" or "rifles" are used, but to the best of my recollection it's always when referring to the rifles of multiple manufacturers.
