The three early variations of the Savage Model 1907 pistol (non military) had metal grips. What material were the grips of the other 20+ variations made from?

BAKALITE

Black rubber grips - molded hard rubber composition.
Think the 1915 & 1917 were same mat'l.

Not Bakalite (sp)

Rick,
You are on the right track but there is a name for the material used. Same material was used on 1915's and 1917's. (and other makers gun grips also, I have recently learned)

GUTTA SOMETHING?

I'll go with hard black rubber too, until educated otherwise.

Bakelite was (is) a crude form of hard plastic made by impregnating layers of paper or cloth with a resin -- rather a lot like fiberglass is made today. Bakelite ( and the modern day
Garolite) is still used for things like circuit boards and as insulation in electrical devices. I use a fair amount of the stuff in my shop, making the experimental devices used by our young mad scientists upstairs in the labs.

Were they experimenting with pressed wood that early, too?

Germany led the world, by far, in the development of early plastics. Trouble was Kaiser Bill preferred to hold those cards tight to his chest as war clouds started to build around the time of the advent of Savage pistols. Most of the rest of the world (including us) had to soldier on with natural products, like wood, ivory, metal, hard rubber, etc. for pistol grips.

Could be gutta percha. too. But it was a rubbery latex-like sap that was vulcanized like rubber latex and made into a lot of different objects. I'll bet gutta percha and hard rubber were terms used interchangeably back then.

"Gutta percha" is a naturally occuring tree sap, which, when allowed to dry out (lose the aromatic solvents contained within) will form a moldable, semi-ridgid material that can be resoftened by heating in water. "Hard rubber" is natural Latex taken from rubber trees (mostly genus ficus), which is mixed with various proportions of sulfur (10% to 30% or so, depending upon the desired hardness of the finished product) in a process known as "vulcanizing".

google is your friend. As has been said it's gutta percha. Black friggan plastic to me.

Pachmayr??

Is that a material? I'm just an electrical guy..

Gutta Percha is it! Sorry for the delay getting back to computer. Had an errand had to be done.......anyway I never heard of Gutta Percha till yesterday. I first heard it spoken on a you tube video. I've always been curious if Savage made the grips themselves or used a vendor. Still don't k now the answer to that one.
Thanks to everyone.

I do know they got brittle with age, I have a 4 # ser. 1907 and need a set of metal grips, it came with the Gutta Percha ones!

I do know they got brittle with age, I have a 4 # ser. 1907 and need a set of metal grips, it came with the Gutta Percha ones!

SO WHAT's The PRIZE???

Well son-of-a-gun.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savage_Model_1907
4th paragraph...

Prizes all gone...given away at the Fest..

Well... is there a chemist in the house?

I still am prone to believe it was hard rubber, not 100% confident in Wikipedia if that was the main source.

As Gnoahhh states there is/was some tendency to use Hard Rubber & Gutta Percha interchangeably and one source or the other had to do that - the sources using the term (hard) rubber that I found are Carr's book, Bailey Browers book and Savage Arms catalogs (#24 is the one I looked at).

The two materials are supposed to be difficult to tell apart because the natural compounds they are made from have similar chemical properties. Information I found says that Gutta Percha will give off a smell similar to rubber when heated but 'sweeter' without a 'bitter sulfur smell'. Hard rubber is made by adding as much as 30% to 40% sulfur and then vulcanizing. I recently replaced a grip on a 1907 and it gave off a odor I thought smelled of sulfur which was my test to see if it was an original grip or not (hard rubber? and it certainly didn't smell sweet!).

I also found some reference to hard rubber turning brown with age and I have seen some grips that have turned brown, sometimes just on one side due to what ever that side was exposed to... but there also is some reference to Gutta Percha sometimes being brown, but those sources also state it will sometimes yellow with age, I have not seen a 1907 with yellowing grips.

I also think that hard rubber cannot be remelted and Gutta Percha can, but we need a chemist to verify that... and then some one to donate a set of grips for a test.

Will I have to give back my prize from Savage Fest if it really turns out to be Gutta Percha?

Edited in - here is a link that has some information on differencesw for Gutta Percha and Vucanite - a brand name for hard rubber (I think... according to Wikipedia...).
Victorian-Jet-and-Other-Mourning-Jewelry It says here that Gutta Percha should taste salty.

Gutta Percha was used in early golf balls as well. Francis Ouimet won the 1913 US Open in Boston, beating Harry Vardon and Ted Ray using these golf balls.

My little buddy Guido said this when I asked him about gutta percha: " Whatta you talka about? Of course-a you gutta da percha before you cook it."