Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors Savage 1920 ?

I just picked up an old Savage rifle, bolt action, tang safety, with a Utica address and Pat. Dates 1916-1919 in 250-3000. The rifle is very light and handles nice. The stock is junk and needs replacing and there is a dovetail cutout in the cocking piece (cocking piece mounted sight?).





Any info would be apreciated.

erich

What is the SN?

I've never seen a Lyman cocking-piece peep sight installed on a Savage 1920, but the dovetail cut into the cocking-piece on your rifle can't be for anything else.

If you PM me your email address, I can send you a WORD document with some (maybe) useful 1920 information. I've owned a lot of 1920s and have been collecting them since 1972+/-.

Jeff

there suppose to be nice guns... everyone here that has had one loves them... Boses of Nebraska I believe can make you a replacement stock... congrats on a new pick up...

I'd say it would be worth putting some TLC into. Nice find! I've yet to get my meathooks on one of them puppies. Some day...

I've seen it once before, was offered the gun but passed on it due to the bad cocking piece job and the ivory inletted into it, probably would have made a nice shooter though.

The sights show up from time to time on ebay, usually listed under "Springfield" "1903" or "03". Usually expensive.

Joe, what the hell??? someone braze that sight on???? Don

Don
looks like they added a little braze -brass and Brazed in on for that sight has a dove tail and if ya messed with the bolt to cut one in the bolt would most likely not function any-more. J..M.O.
I thought about doing that once for i had on,,but after studying the 1920-26 bolt decided not to cut one.
steve

I considered a cocking piece sight for mine until I took a good hard look at it. Unlike the '03 Springfield cocking piece, the Model 20's is deeply dished. Whereas installing one on the '03 is a relatively straightforward operation, the 20 would require a lot more work such as A)cutting an extremely deep dovetail (weakening the cocking piece and requiring a special sight base to be made) or B) filling in the dished end of the cocking piece and then cut a standard dovetail, C)Brazing/soldering it on (ref: Mad Dog's photo- unacceptable) and D) fabricate an entire new cocking piece sans the dished end. Haven't completely ruled out (D) yet, but it would be about #23 in the gun project lineup. All that to get the sight aperture 1 1/2" closer to the eye. It would sure look neat though!

Another thing for would-be cocking piece sight installers to keep in mind is the positioning of the sight for repeated shots: they never return to the exact position in battery (a lot of wobble out there on the tail end). Accuracy won't be as good as with a tail piece sight, or better yet, a reciever sight. What the old "classic" smiths did to mitigate that problem back when they were fairly popular on '03s and Mausers was to cut a v-notch in the sear (vertically in the bottom of the cocking piece) and then cut the back end of the trigger in a vee shape to match the notch. That greatly improved shot-to-shot alignment. Don't quote me, but that may have been an innovation concieved at the Gibbs Rifle Co. in England a looong time ago.

Gary

My Lyman #13 catalog lists the 1A, 2A, and 103 as being available with dovetail base for mounting on Springfield 1903 & 1906, Krag, Mannlicher-Haenel 9mm, Newton, and some Mannlicher-Schoenauers and Mauser rifles. The M54 sight is in the catalog.

I have seen Lyman sight sets that included a dovetailed Springfield striker to go with the sight. I do not know if the set came before or after the time period for the #13 catalog.

Gary has a great point in terms of how to secure the sight to the striker. You may want to remove the knob entirely, attach a knob from another rifle.

Another point is the increased mass of the striker. At minimum, it increases "lock time", for what that is worth. At worst, with the increased mass, could the Savage 20 striker spring be too weak to reliably ignite primers? I read an "ask the experts" article from the period that generally looked down on striker mounted sights because of the increased mass.

Townsend Whelen put a 103 Lyman cocking piece sight on his Fred Adolph 1903 Springfield, now in the NRA Museum. Evidently he wasn't too worried about slowing down the striker fall. The 103, with windage and elevation, is a lot more massive than a 1A or 2A.

Mark,

Wasn't the wife of a well-known pre-WW2 gun writer severly injured by a bolt peep sight when the stock slipped off her shoulder during the recoil cycle? IIRC, they were hunting deep in the Alaskan or Canadian wilderness when she was injured and she lost her eye(?) before she could get back to civilization.

Jeff

I think Mrs. Paul Curtis with a Savage 99 .300 shooting uphill. Probably Mike Petrov would know.

What did you wind up paying for that. I saw it listed for 200.00 on Wash. Hunt.

You're right!

Mrs. Paul Curtis with a tang sight equiped Savage 99 in 300 Savage. Shooting uphill toward a goat or sheep.

Jeff

Still get folks who pop onto the forum every year or so and say how dangerous those tang sights are because so many folks have lost an eye to them. But she's the only one I ever heard of that did it.

Stock crawlers take care, try not to scrunch up.

I need a stock cocking piece for one of them. Anyone have one to sell?

Thanks for all the info. I have a few 1899/99 that I hunt with and have always been impressed with them. This gun is a real suprise it was really ahead of it's time, tang safety, light weight, modern rimless round, good trigger. I like it so much that I might just fix it up for a hunting gun, slender Mannlicher stock with barrel band and build a base for the cocking piece to mount a tang sight to.

erich