Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors The 99 stock wedge

Some here have said that the effect of recoil acting on the tangs as wedges drives the wood apart, forcing cracks. I do see evidence of the wood compressing over time with recoil and pushing wood up in the sliding safety groove.

My question is do you guys see other rifles or shotguns with tapered tang designs showing as many cracks as 99's? I'm thinking SxS shotguns have similar stock designs. Are they prone to splitting as well?

Just curious what the failure rate of other similar stocks designs is.

I deal with older Browning A5s, all the time, and while I don't see the tangs split too often, it does happen. More common is for oil punked wood to soften around the tang screw hole, and allow it to elongate the hole. Drying the stocks out, removing the soft wood, and epoxy or a metal sleeve epoxied in, often addresses it. My habit is to leave older guns, with wood stocks, barrel down on a rag, after cleaning or hunting in the wet, overnight, to ensure stuff doesn't collect in the wood around the tangs. Does this apply to savage 99s? Not sure. They aren't my forte. I would presume it could, and could be allowing receiver movement in the in letting, until you have a crack. If so, bedding might prevent it?

While I've seen cracked stocks on sid by sides and over unders, I've never noticed it to be an affliction like I've seen in 99 Savages.

Is there any preventative maintenance that can be done to prevent this from happening?

Steve

Drifting a bit from the direct question about other similar tang/stock designs as I have no observations,... I would say that the "99" tang/stock is an effeminate design that is not mechanically over designed to accommodate both recoil and/or side to side pressure of normal long term use.
Was working on a Win 1894 a week or so ago and it kind of jumped out that;
1) both the upper and lower tang are long and protect the wrist.
2) the stock does not have cheeks.

On a "99", assuming the stock bolt is not too tight, and assuming the stock fits perfectly and assuming the rifle is not exposed to side to side pressure for any reason, it will not crack.
In general I just think the majority of tang cracks are side to side pressure vs. recoil.
I could be wrong. It is what is it.
Wonder what Arthur Savage would say. ??

I was repairing a cracked 99DL stock yesterday (shipping damage) when I broke the stinking thing completely off on one side spreading the crack to epoxy. I didn't catch that the crack went all the way around the grip.

Mercy.

Back together now. I've had several of the newer 99's with cracks low on the cheeks. The stock fit is terrible and the recoil hammers the lower cheek since they look like they are drilled off center or some darn thing. Lots of refitting needed to get things back in alignment.

On the new stock I just fitted to an 1899 I achieved a close fit on the two tangs (by tediously spotting them in), and then epoxy bedded the area around the draw bolt on the back of the bottom tang, and left a 1/32" gap behind the top tang, and bedded the bottom of the top tang. I also painted the inside of the mortise with thickened epoxy to give it as much of a chance as possible, being careful not to get it so thick as to interfere with the lever/bolt/safety. (Actually, I did get it too thick in a couple spots and had to relieve them.) I also think those two little tabs of wood that squeak up into the receiver at the front of the side panels need to be tightly fitted - they help to resist the tendency for the cheeks to spread apart and crack from the pressure of the tang "wedges". (I suspect that was the original idea behind them.) Perhaps a bit overboard, and not something I would recommend for a "collectable", but in this instance I was determined to do all that is possible to prevent the "Savage crack" in a gun intended to last in the hunting fields into the next century.

I think, too, that a lot of the Savage cracks come from poor choice of wood and/or grain layout. I have seen some nice old Savages with gorgeous wood from the factory, but without straight grain running through the wrists, that were cracked to hell and gone and I suspect that had a lot to do with it too.

Many times, it is a better repair if the crack is complete. Getting an oil free surface for the epoxy to bond to is easier to achieve to say nothing about getting 100% epoxy coverage in the crack.

Most SxS boxlocks are almost all designed and attached differently than the 99. Its pretty hard to describe but generally they have a bolt that goes from top down or bottom up through the tang, then through a thick portion of the stock and then through the other tang. While it looks like a wedge design, its not really when compared to the design of the 99. On the SxSs you see cracking on the "cheeks" and sometimes chipping around the tangs but very rarely do you see substantial stock cracks at the aft of the tangs. This is more from oil soak, expansion, or wear to the bolt mating area that takes most of the load. Generally, they have more load carrying area then a 99.

Sidelocks are a totally different beast but generally work more like the box lock (but turned on its side) then a 99.

The addition of recoil pads on shotguns being much more common than on 99s, may also help contribute to lower cracking. Ultimately, you will see cracking on any of the above for the same root causes... oil soaking, poor fit, fit not updated over time, over tightened or loose bolts, side loads, etc.

A design analysis worth thinking about.

LC smith sidelock shotguns are notorious for hairline cracks a the back of the sideplates. They look to be designed to wedge into the wood. Careful inletting on the internal areas followed by a soak of thin super glue will prevent this if caught in time. Unfortunately, the time to do this was decades ago for most of them.

Charlie

When I started small game hunting, the single shot shotgun was king. H&R finally redesigned their shotguns because of this problem. I have an old Stevens in the closet I picked up cheap at a show. It is very tight and looks as if it saw almost no use. The wood along the sides is a tight fit, but the tang area has a gap. I suspect the H&R's started out like this and just became loose from oil and recoil over the years. The next step was the owner tightening up the stock bolt. Then the cracks started.