Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors Model 1899 with a Model 1903 buttplate

This just ended on GunBroker and got relisted, did anyone else notice this one and the buttplate?
gunbroker/item/1035966270 serial 83,387 (pic. 10)

That is a Model 1903 buttplate stamped out of sheetmetal, there is no leg at the top and it is attached by 2 screws at the rear. Pictures 17(link) & 22(link) show it the best. It raises some questions, is it possibly factory? The stock doesn't fit well at the receiver and it looks sanded, but probably not enough to explain the poor fit to the upper tang. Did someone replaced the stock with one that had a flat buttplate and decide it need to a crescent buttplate, and a Model 1903 one was what they had on hand? Notice the toe is curled.

The logo was added to the Model 1903 buttplates about 1907, so that is the correct vintage for it possibly being factory, but I would doubt it, althought for a time Savage did fit buttplates for the Model 1904 22 to 1899's if they were ordered with a shotgun style butt. Most examples of those have the buttplate with all the advertizing on it.

some pictures of a Model 1903 buttplate




There is enough wood on this stock to fit one, but the length of pull would be slightly shortened.


I have an1899 that originally had a shotgun type buttplate and had a standard crescent one fitted to it, but it is obviously not factory work.

It's not a perchbelly buttstock, so it's not a correct buttstock for an 83.xxx serial numbered gun.

Were there ANY other known factory 1899's with the 1903-ish curved plate? Poor fit to the receiver speaks of this being a barn-yard bubba repair/replacement job..., might have been from a farm in Utica, with lotsa spare parts laying around, but not a brick machine shop.., (imho). Did anyone ask the seller if the butt stock, or plate has a serial number?

There is also another 1899B in that accumulation that has a poor replacement butt stuck, and a couple with molested receivers, all more evidence of bubba-fication in the whole lot,