Savage .22 autoloaders had the floating chamber invented by Carbine Williams. He licensed it to several manufacturers.
I did not know that any Savage .22 autos used the floating chamber. I only thought the Remington 550 and 550-1 did. Do you remember the model number of the Savage that used Mr. Williams patent?
For those that may not know this, there are basically two ways to make a .22 autoloading rifle function with all three .22 rimfire cartridge lengths.
The most popular method is to simply install a recoil spring light enough to operate with .22 shorts. The .22 long rilfes and longs will actually "over" operate the spring. Some manufactures incorporated rubber or plastic buffers at the back of the receiver to help absorb this force from the longer rounds. The modern Remington 552 uses such a buffer.
The other method was to use a floating chamber. Carbine Williams patented this invention and one of the earliest firearms to employ it was the Colt Ace .22 autoloader pistol. It made a slide locking 1911 Colt auto function with .22 long rifles and simulated the bounce of a full .45 ACP round. The Army used these for training troops with cheaper ammo but many civilians purchased them as well.
The Remington 550 and 550-1 .22 autoloading rifles used a variation to enable a .22 short to make a .22 long rifle strength recoil spring compress enough to operate with shorts. The floating chamber incorporates a seperate inner/back part of the chamber. There is a slight gap/ring in the .22 long rifle length chamber that is located right at the case mouth of a .22 short cartridge. A bit of the short's gas bleeds off into this ring and this acts on the sliding rear portion of the chamber to increase the blow back force on the bolt face. Thus the weaker cartridge can still propel the bolt back with enough force to compress the heavy recoil spring. They do get dirty though and cause malfunctions if allowed to stay that way. My Remington 550-1 ran through about two boxes of shorts flawlessly and then in box # 3 it started to jam. The rifle actually began to sound different. Just some solvent and some judicious brushing with a bronze .22 cal. brush loosened mine right up. I assume the ring/gap fills with fouling and "freezes" after a while. These little floating chambers require some meticulous machining and would be cost prohibitive at today's rates.
Funny thing about the Remington 550-1. It is an exceptionally accurate .22 rifle (I mean scary accurate for a semi-auto). An old gunsmith (he passed a few years ago) once told me that there was actually a small cottage industry tasked with welding up these floating chambers. The owners wanted their rifles to work exclusively with the more serious and accurate .22 LR round. They did not have to clean the rifle as much and when they did it was easier. I think Remington would have had a winner if they had simply dropped the floating chamber (as neat a device as it was) and brought out a .22 LR only model 550-2 (sounds as good a name as any).
