Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors Savage 99 fruitwood stocks

What type of fruitwood were they made of?
Or did it vary?
Are they worth more than traditional walnut?
I do not have any for sale but a local guy has one and asked me about them.

I've heard different answers to your question but I think it was a general term used for a variety of hardwoods - other than walnut. In other words, the stocks were either made of walnut or (some sort of) fruit wood. But there are others on this forum who know way better than I.

What is interesting is that he has a .308 with a fruit stock, I thought those were only made with early H models. Perhaps someone stocked them off an old H onto a .308 99.

They are not made of walnut but rather mystery wood. They are not valuable. A friend of mine had an E buttstock with the ugly plastic buttplate that he gave me. It was on his table at a gun show and when I asked how much, he said "free, get it out of my sight." David

I don't think Savage was the only maker who did this. Seems to me that there are many older Winchester 94s that were also stocked with "fruitwood." Maybe it was just a generic term for cheap gun lumber.

Don't know that the later 99's were fruitwood.. ?? Walnut or birch I thought was all they used.

I think he has either a Birch stock or fruitwood taken off another rifle. I'll get some pics if he brings it to the range next time.

I remember we hashed this out around ten years ago, and decided that the wood primarily used for fruitwood stocks was red gum- a rather hard wood found mainly below the Mason-Dixon, not particularly sought after and mostly used as a secondary wood in cabinet making. It lacks character but is fairly stable. I would rank it alongside birch in that respect. It is a lot cheaper than walnut today and I would assume it was the same back then- a perfect substitute for walnut when the gun company was trying to pinch pennies.

Fruit wood isn't common enough to utilize for mass production. That is regarding apple, pear, etc. Nor do said trees typically get big enough to cut stock blanks out of. Cherry is an exception. If they used cherry, you could tell immediately by looking at it.

I'll bet an entrepreneurial lumber man with a sh*tload of red gum on his hands made Savage an offer they couldn't refuse.

Red gum is easy to work, but for some reason is a bitch to split for firewood. That I can tell you from experience...

The fact it showed up only on the 99H's might also have been an attempt to lighten them as well as keep the cost. The 99H's were one of the cheapest 99 models, but also one of the lightest.

Great reading this thread. Thanks guys.

Red gum: as my esteemed colleague Mr. Noahh has already noted.

"Fruitwood" was most likely a term the marketing and sales team came up with. Can you imagine advertising your gun as "the gun with the finest gum wood stock in the industry"? No way. In fact I suppose they went out of their way not to call it gum wood.

For many many years red gum was the most harvested hard wood annually in the US, in terms of board footage. Don't know if that is still the case, but I suppose simple internet search would answer that question.

Edit: http://www.slma.org/pdf/Hardwood-Handbook.pdf see page 16

https://www.na.fs.fed.us/spfo/pubs/silvics_manual/volume_2/liquidambar/styraciflua.htm Note: Sweatgum = Red gum

Has anyone ever seen fruitwood 99 with a tang crack? I have not...

Doug

No, but since we’re talking guns made prior to WWII I have to say that most 99s I’ve seen post date that event. I also have to say that most of the walnut stocks I’ve seen did not have cracks behind the tang and of the prewar guns many of the cracks I’ve seen were in the more slender schnable forearms. Having said that, I’m not sure walnut is the best stock wood as other woods seem to be stonger and lighter in weight, they just don’t catch our eye like walnut does.

So, the plot thickens a bit. I wonder if maybe Savage wasn't going for cheap when they used fruitwood/red gum stocks, rather an attempt to dispel tang cracks?

Add that to your to-do list Mr Peabody the next time you fire up the Wayback Machine.

I've owned a couple of Husqvarnas with beech stocks. The wood is very hard and pretty much ideal for a rifle stock, but it's an odd pale yellow-brown color that turns most people off pretty much instantly.


Okie John

Now that you bring it up, no, I have not. Hmmmmm...........

I might be the one to blame for the "fruit wood" name. I started collecting Winchesters as my dad did. Winchester stocked some of their `92 and `94 carbines in the teen's and they were known to have "fruit wood" stocks, same mystery wood as used by Savage about 10 years later. I carried the term to the Savage Forum many moon's ago and it seems to have stuck.

To my knowledge Savage never advertised nor published that they made the 99-H with any wood but walnut. One of those big Savage, never say "never" items.

Rick, so I'm confused a bit now. Did any of the 99Hs have fruitwood (generically speaking... wood other than walnut) stocks?

The 99-H with fruit wood" is very common through 1927. Some of the stocks have enough grain in them that it is hard to tell that it is not walnut. The 99-H is the only Savage model that used the "fruit wood" stock.

I think mine has a tang crack. But not usual in appearance. Thinking about reboring it to a 38 55 to lighten the barrel.