Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors Savage 1899 with set trigger

I love that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Black powder wasn't the sole culprit prior to the very early 20th century. The powder was hygroscopic- it and its residue attracted moisture like crazy, it's principle contribution to rust. If all that were to be contended with was black powder fouling there would be a lot more old nice bores around today. The real Mr. Nasty was the fulminate of mercury used in the primer. In terms of causing rust, it was fast acting and insidious, and erosive in its own right. Look at how easy it is to maintain a nice bore in a black powder-shooting muzzle loader or BPCR today, given modern non-corrosive ignition. The chlorate primers that put the mercuric primers out of business were less nasty, but still bad enough and not as fast acting in their nastiness. That whole primer business extended to early smokeless cartridges too.

Another detriment to using mercuric primers was it's residue attacked the brass cartridge case too, causing some kind of metallic/chemical reaction that embrittled the brass for later re-loading, and was one reason, I'm told, that the gov't tin plated late issue .45-70 cartridges and most all .30-40 Krag brass as it was common practice for local units to reload them with light cast bullet loads for short range and gallery practice..

This set trigger is awesome but like others said, the sear engagement is terribly scary. I'm surprised its not a hair trigger regardless of the set trigger function. Seems like with the set trigger function, it would have been unnecessary to mess with the sear engagement that much.

Thats probably why savage decided against making them for the general public. Don

yeah but the set trigger design doesn't seem to require a small sear engagement area.

I did look at the picture closer and there is a little more sear/hammer engagement then I originally thought but its still not much!