Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors Going to sell my .30-30 Win EG but....

Started life a smooth 30-30 Speigel(had one)and bubba checkered and added compass.

My $.02's, checkering and compass were added after purchase. I don't think we have seen a compass in any of the other have we?

The D&T = Spiegel. Also the sling loops style and location are correct for that time period.

Did you guys not see Mr. Callahan's hand written note? He says that the compass is original. No reason to believe the checkering isn't as well. Might have been an earlier attempt or a rush job. It might have been checkered on a Friday. Or a Monday. It was during the Depression. Someone might have been really depressed.

Disagree with Mr. Callahan on this one.Checkering & compass have Bubba written all over it.The letter itself told you what you already knew.

Great pics would be greatly appreciated. If you could send them to my email address: wyomingsavage1895gmail.com as well as post them here I would greatly appreciate it.
My next book will probably have to consist of many photos taken by other people. The first book consisted mostly of photos of rifles in major collections. This still required quite a bit of travel. The next book will contain a lot of oddities like this rifle and the 1899 Schutzen that I photographed last Spring and posted photos here. It will be cost prohibitive to travel long distances to photograph one gun.
My publisher recently asked if I planned another book and I told them I had another in mind. I want to go into a great deal of detail on Enoc Tue's engraving and non-cataloged oddities such as Loggah's half octagon SRC, Rick99's octagon barreled 99C, the 1899 Schutzen, the many variations of the Speigle's, the 99RT's, etc.
I probably should have started a new thread on this. I will get into this further on the forum after hunting season.
I'll be at the Utah Gun Collector's Association gun show this weekend in Ogden. I'll be displaying my 51 rifle collection and selling books.
David

pdcrig, I read the letter and post-it. The letters usually provide some general information from which one can deduce the rifle model, configuration and born on date. The post-it is some additional info provided by JTC who may have inside information as a former Savage employee. Nice gesture on his part. However, the post-it does not say specifically that the compass/checking were Savage factory done, nor does the letter. I think he is saying "Spiegel had the work done". By who? Good question.
I have a similar rifle that is D&T'd like yours, and I suspect the D&T was possibly done by Belding & Mull or whoever the optics folks were at the time. At that time the burden of jigs & fixtures for drilling a rifle so that their scopes fit correctly was on the optics manufacture as optics were new and in general early rifles of any kind were not D&Td. I have some original Belding & Mull literature and it specifically says something to the effect "rifle must be factory fitted" by B&M.
JMO

You will never convince me that this checkering was done by anybody other than someone who knew enough about it to be dangerous. Bubba, in other words. A final inspector at the factory would've taken one look at it and sent it back for a re-do. That compass was set in place by whoever did the lousy job of checkering too, I'll bet. Besides, compasses didn't become a fad until the 1950's when anybody with a drill bit could install one in their basement.

You can delude yourself into believing whatever you want it to be, but the evidence speaks for itself, IMO. The letter/note says nothing about said work being factory. Such a sloppy job of checkering wouldn't have passed muster at any facility that "doctored" rifles for the Spiegel company. They had as much of a stake in their gun's appearances as the Savage factory did. In the depths of the Depression, maintenance of high levels of quality were paramount for everybody's survival in the manufacturing world.

The more I think about it, the more I think it started out as a pre-war EG sans checkering, had the d/t'ed holes installed per Belding&Mull or somesuch who knew what they were doing, checkering and compass courtesy of Bubba, sling swivels courtesy of the local gun shop (I've seen that style on more rifles than just Savage). It is what it is: a decent hunting rifle, no more no less. It's additional desirability is due to the cartridge; .30-30 is pretty cool in an EG.

Rick, what are the the earliest Spiegel guns with rollstamping?

This one went to Spiegel.. and has the d&t holes and the sling studs that match the standard Spiegel EG's. Rather than just write it off as bubba work, let's see where it fits in with the others. How many folks wrote off the standard Spiegel guns as being worthless because of d&t holes and sling studs?

I have data on one R and four H's that are D&T'd (B&M) only. Plus two EG's with no roll engraving. One is Pdcrig's and the other is within 500 serial of it. No checkering, sling loops (front holds the forearm on)and D&T'd. The above are all pre-372xxx cut off. Pdcrig's is the only lettered.

After these the roll engraving starts showing up with other options that we have posted about. There is no log info available only the Spiegel ads.

I think Savage did the checkering, sling loops and the B&M D&T. Probably not on all because we don't know if all went to Spiegel but there are too many rifles with the same features to be after market.

I say that Pdcrig's rifle left the factory with sling loops and D&t'd.

I have an R in 250 that's 1000 higher than that and is d&t with those B&M holes, so we do see them. No compass in mine, though mine is also d&t for side Weaver T7. I'm not sure I recall seeing another B&M d&t gun with compass?

I was just wanting to remove the possibility that his might be some early variant.

pdcrig, the checkering style is different than anything Savage was doing at that time. They were checkering the 99G, 99T and the 99R, I can't see the factory doing an entirely new checkering pattern for a single Spiegel EG. It looks like a pretty good checkering job, just not one of Savage's styles. Most here would presume the compass was added by the same guy who did the checkering, but it might be that Mr. Callahan knows something we don't about Spiegel and compasses and it was done by the factory. Never say never.

All good info guys. Thanks a bunch. I think I'm going to hang on to this one for now. I can't really see me having a more interesting .30-30 Win rifle right now. Now I just need to find a load that it likes. It seems to like the 170gr stuff the best.