Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors .303 Savage 1899 Curiousity

I picked this up last weekend.

Thought I overpaid once the buyers commission was included.

Put it up last night. Pictures suck, as I took them near sunset and had to tweak them all.
Just looked at the auction with plans to put up better pics.
Won't be doing that as you can't edit an auction once it has a bid. Could add more pics, and may do so if there is good reason.

http://www.gunbroker.com/Auction/ViewItem.aspx?Item=555333036

Twelve hours into a 12 day auction it has nine bids.

I was quite surprised at the bids. Not a take down model and not early production? What makes this rifle interesting?


Please let me know if posting the auction link is not allowed and I'll take it down and apologize profusely!

99s show up quite often at auction around here and I clearly need to learn more about them.

I think posting your rifle/auction is ok.

Looks like a nice 99H.

SWS,

Thank you for the information.
Need to learn more about the models.

Just knowing it is an 'H' helped me turn up that non-takedown and .303's are both lower production features of this rifle.

I would guess that is part of the interest/bids.

Early 99H, type V1-1 with the rifle weight barrel. Looks nice.

Off to Google again!

EDIT:
http://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/topics/8007252/99H

Thank you sir!

Just an early 99-H. Sights have been replaced...buggered wood when they did it. What is the dark area behind the top tang. Strange coloring pattern. Has there been work done in that area?

"
Just knowing it is an 'H' helped me turn up that non-takedown and .303's are both lower production features of this rifle. "

None of the 99-H's were take downs. Don't confuse with the 1899-H, not the same. The .303 was the more common at that time.

That area behind the tang is one of the pics I need to update. Looks to have had a tang sight mounted and the contact/oil discolored the wood.

Help me out. 99-H vs. 1899-H ??
Rifle is marked '1899 Model'

Even after the nomenclature change to "99" from "1899" they continued marking the receivers "1899". Don't ask me why, probably a cost savings.

The 1899H's of the pre-1920-ish time period were the company's lightweight carbine takedown model. After the change, the alphabet usage got mixed around a bit. Ie: the 1899H morphed into the 99F with subtle changes in finish and stock shape.

The 1899H was a short carbine produced from 1905 to 1920 with either a hard rubber shotgun style buttplate or a steel shotgun style buttplate. Often seen with the takedown option. When the 99's were introduced in the 1920's, it continued as the 99E solid frame and the 99F takedown.

The 99H was new in 1924(?) and if anything was a continuation of the 1899F saddle ring carbine. But it's only real similarity is the carbine style buttplate.

Many 99's in the 1920's are stamped Savage Model 1899. It never confused anybody back then because the model 1899's as we know them now never had model names. Douglas Murray coined the 1899 model names in the 1970's(?) based off of the telegraph codes used to order them.

We are picky about the names just because otherwise we'd go nuts trying to tell the difference between an 1899F saddle ring carbine dating from 1899-1917 vs. an 1899F takedown dating from 1921 to 1927 versus a 99F takedown dating from 1928 to 1940. MUCH easier to just have an 1899F and a 99F.

Likely a tang repair. GW

Is this stock known as "fruit wood"?

Is there a story behind Savage fruit wood?

no you can see the imprint of the tang sight on the tang itself






probably is a birch or fruitwood stk

norm

Unknown light colored wood stained to a darker color. There's a pic of one of Rick's 99H's with some of the stain worn off on page 65 of my book. David

I thought we pretty much agreed a long time ago that the "fruitwood" stocks were almost entirely red gum, not birch, beech, or in fact any kind of fruitwood (cherry/apple/pear/etc.).

When Rick and I were discussing the 99H's for my book he referred to the wood on them as a unknown species of white wood. David

I would bet the farm on their being red gum in the main. I'm pretty good at identifying wood, and every one of these I observed was, to me, obviously red gum. That is a common hardwood from Mid-Atlantic south and an obvious source for utility grade applications, even with its lack of character and lesser stability than just about everything else. Simply put, it is cheap and plentiful. Just the ticket for a gun company trying to cut manufacturing costs to the quick for an econo model gun. Board foot costs for red gum is about, like, a third of walnut.

Personally, I hate the stuff. Not for the plebeian aspects of it but rather for how nasty it is to split into firewood! And then it doesn't give off the heat that one expects from oak, osage orange, hickory, etc. Its leaves provide a nice scarlet contrast to the yellow and browns of the rest of the trees during Indian Summer though.

I'm really rather surprised that beech hasn't gained more popularity than it has for utility gun stocks. It is strong, stable, and makes for very good gun stock material. Witness the widespread use of it in European military rifles. For some reason American gun companies often turned to birch for that application, even though it's a "birch" to stain evenly and softer than almost every other hardwood available.

Gary, do you know how red gum compares to walnut weight wise?

Red gum is a bit lighter than black walnut (34 lbs. per cubic foot versus 38 pounds for walnut), and a slightly lower specific gravity. I found that when making objects out of red gum I had to limit it to applications that held the pieces in an interlocked fashion to prevent warpage. Free standing panels would look like a pretzel before long. I quit that experiment after I planed a small stack of it one afternoon and found it to be cupped/warped overnight, even with it registering less than 10% moisture content. Admittedly there might have been extenuating circumstances, but I play it safe and avoid that species. (I know, I'm bigoted and prejudiced about wood. ) The bit about it being a b*tch to split is because of its interlocking grain structure, or so I'm told.

Yes it is hard to split. It seems to rip apart instead of split. One thing they did make out of Gum is the old wood Ice Cream spoons that came with the little cardboard cups that came with school lunch's. Since we got on the subject of wood, here's a picture of the Dawn Redwood I milled last weekend. The 8' slabs are over 100 pounds each, but a couple small pieces dried out light as a feather. I wonder if Redwood has ever been used for stock wood. I have 2, 7 footers left, maybe I'll cut a nice red stock blank out and put it up in the rafters for a couple years, Joe.