Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors 1964

As per discovery during anti-trust trials, Microsoft came up with a price tag of $45 for it's Windows upgrades in the 90's that would allow MicroSoft to make a reasonable profit. Bill Gates laughed and raised the price to $95 - said what are they going to do? They have to buy it.

I'm sure the "bean counters" are needed for determining the cost of production and the amount of profit needed to keep the company going. I don't hold that against anyone. There also a psychological factor in setting a price point. If some things are priced to low they seem to get no respect and go nowhere. To high and they go nowhere too. Just right and it seems to work. And then there's damn greed - which I think drives way too much these days. And its the damn greed factor that may have started to become more common practice by the late 60s. But then again, greed is not an alien subject to the history of our country and to mankind in general. You just have to watch out for the bastards and your pocket book!

For what it's worth, I've got a Harrington & Richardson single-shot shotgun. This is one of the 'fancy' singles with a full length matted rib, checkering and pistol grip cap, dating, I think from sometime during the inter-war years. When I first acquired it, I thought there was something weird about the checkering, the panels seemed "fuzzy" or something. I finally realized there was no border around the panels of checkering. The grooves just ended beyond the last perpendicular cut. Mostly pretty even, though, with very few over-runs. Must have taken some practice.

I've always wondered why the gun makers didn't/couldn't think up a reason to sell guns with uncheckered stocks as some kind advantage. I've never really found uncheckered stocks that much of a disadvantage (if any) in actual use.

I have never worked in a consumer product industry (unless you count nine months in a chewing gum factory) but I was involved in "bean counting" for a machine tool company for thirty-nine years. When I started, in 1966, the company was transitioning from hand operated and small hydraulic sheet metal equipment to numerically controlled sheet and plate fabricating. For the entire time I was there, I was involved in cost accounting for machines up to a million dollars. In 1968, we started a beam punching line, that developed into a large handling system, with punches, cold saws, and fit up stations. Some of these were as much as several hundred feet of conveyors, saws, loaders, and unloader/rackers. If you were in the beam and angle business, you pretty much bought our equipment or were getting along on the ornamental iron business, When that line faded out, we were ready with computer operated punch/plasma machines, that were extremely productive. The last thirty-five years I was there, we never had a losing year, and some years were unbelievably profitable. The reason for the company's success was to always have a new product that made the customer a lot of money. You have to provide a satisfactory product, at a price that makes sense to the customer. Firearms manufacturers are like any other business; they cannot price themselves above what the market will bear. Aesthetics, utility, and price are not always compatible.

By the way, all us bean counters, retired or active, resent that appellation, and due to our profession, we have wide acquaintance within the IRS. Refer to us as bean counters once too often, and we will drop a dime on you!

I certainly am not looking to have a dime dropped on me today. Whatever that means it sounds ominous, especially coming from a bean counter.

through the 50's i was so enamored with lever guns(hold over from my red rider) that nothing else except trapdoor springfields existed. around 1960 all my buds started to laugh at me for not having a bolt gun with a scope. by 1964 you could buy a 94 winchester used for around 75-150. most of the gun writers around then were pimping the current mostest hot bolt gun and the attitudes of people changed enough it hurt the companies building levers i think. jmho

that and bean counters!

I got a whole role of dimes. Remember, an IRS audit that results in nothing is a lot like a colonoscopy.

I think I had one of those once. I don't remember which one, but I'm pretty sure there were no dimes involved. Definitely not a dropped one.

The thing is, most bean counters have no better idea how many beans are in the jar than we do.

You know we're only kidding you! Right?


Right?

I hope you don't get a dime dropped on you for that. Keep a piggybank handy, just in case.

That's ok, Roy. I'm invisible. Besides, the IRS is a swell bunch of bean counters.

It was all lost......

Due to the utter disregard......

For the lost potential of the 6.5 - 40 P - krag.

I don't know anything about Winchesters. They must have cut out a few machining operations on the 94's to save money post 64 huh? Seems like a removable magazine 99 would also save money over the internal rotary style. Wonder what happened to the stocks that they buggered up the checkering on? 1959/60 99E's?

The immediate post-64 Winchester 94 is notorious for being made out of what some call "mystery metal." They do not take a re-blue without turning purple. Seems to me I heard somewhere that Winchester had to plate the receivers so they would take the original factory blue. The plating obviously comes off with polishing. I think a lot of things like that happened in their factory at that time. The 99Cs may have been an attempt to save some bucks, but clip fed guns were more popular (the Remington 740/742, 760 and 788, and the Winchester 88 and 100 to name a few) at that time and it may have been Savage's attempt at "keeping up with the neighbors."

I just went down and checked, I thought my 308 DL was a 64. 25S, so I guess it's a 65, Joe.

Post-64 Winchester M94 receivers were sintered metal....

I'm not familiar with that. What's sintered metal?

Per Wikipedia, "Sintering is the process of compacting and forming a solid mass of material by heat or pressure without melting it to the point of liquefaction".

You mean like clay?

Think 'particle board' only with metal fragments.