Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors 99 25-35 bores

I just picked another 1899F SRC locally for cheap. Probably just a parts gun or will need to become another caliber since I can't bring myself to strip a gun for parts. WTF went on wth 25-35s back in the day? There is basically no rifling left and the bore is in horrible, like very bad, shape. Almost every 99 in 25-35 I've seen is like this. I have one that has an okay-ish bore and then Roy's numrich barrel are the best ones I've seen. It's like everyone shot black powder rounds out of them and never cleaned them.

38-55's too.Sewer pipe's.

I have 11+ 30-30s from 1899 - 1920 and all the bores are great. Some of them are unbelievably good considering their age. So maybe 25-35s were more utility rifles and 30-30s were mainly deer guns and shot only couple times a year. That would not explain 38-55s. But the only 38-55s I have are rechambers from JES and the bores are spectacular. LOL.

Very true observation on the bores and most of the rifles are bad on the outside as well. From riding in horses scabbards?

I have a group of 1899 B's. All 5 calibers. There is one missing from the picture. It is an engraved model 1899B In 303Sav
The bottom one is a 25-35 with an almost pristine bore, and it came with a pristine price, but it resides in the stable now. Ah, what the heck, I will add it to the post. Fire away.

Steve that's a group photo that makes me drool.

Big plus one!

Thanks Ol' friend. I am happy you are checking in from time to time even though the place is pretty well slipped.

Black powder would erode the bore.
The transition to smokeless powders in all calibers may have taken a long time and plenty of black power was available?

The .25-35, .30-30 and .32 Spl were introduced as smokeless powder cartridges so unless they were loading their own with black should not have been the problem. The .32-40 and .38-55 was the reverse.

Very nice set of "B's"
Steve

Thank you sir. They go very nicely with a certain Crescent

Slipped? Or evolved, like everything else in life?

Corrosive primers will rust a barrel overnight if not properly cleaned right away.

.22 HPs and 25-35s do tend to have, on average, poorer bore conditions in 1899/99s than those with larger bores.

I think it was due to the mercuric primers used at the start, followed soon by the early chlorate primers. Both were nasty rust-buggers. Add to that the soft cupro-nickel bullet jacket material that left more and more jacket fouling as velocities increased, and trapped the corrosive priming compound underneath it making it difficult to eradicate. (Not as big a deal with early .30 bullets moving slower and fouling less. Exceptions being high-vel .30 military rifles where users were indoctrinated in intense bore cleaning protocols, and .22HP's which were by-and-large the province of knowledgeable riflemen who stayed ahead of the corrosion.)

A lot of .22 and .25 caliber target rifles from the period have survived with decent bores so why not them too being sewer pipes like the .25-35's? Answer: they were shot with lead bullets and black powder, and their users were holdovers from the strictly black powder era who were anal about cleaning after shooting. No bullet jacket fouling, and little leading at their low velocities, so little chance for hot soapy water cleaning protocols to not eradicate corrosive primer residues.

Welp, I guess that pretty well explains it. Thanks fella's!

This rifle is probably worthy of its own thread. Certainly more pics Steve....