Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors Flame checkering?

Who has early guns with flame checkering? Just curious what serial number range they show up in. If you have a letter on the gun with an accepted date, bonus points.

I'd be curious about any that are after WWI also, rifles with options are so rare after that.

My rifle has a ton of options, so almost surely was delivered much later than the serial number indicates. It's 36.5xx. Need to letter it.

Rory, my rifle s/n 37.747. has that style flame checkering also, the letter states.

303 full octagon barrel,fancy american walnut pistol grip stock and forearm
accepted from the factory to warehouse Dec 23, 1902, shipped Dec 23, 1902
to the Globe Printing Co.

It doesn't say anything about the checkering, but im sure its factory original.

Wouldn't those look cool as flames on a hot rod! Nice rifle - how about a full picture.

Beautiful gun, Don! That beats the earliest flame checkered date I had by 9 months. I'm sure it's factory also, only possibility is if it was sent back and checkering added later (unlikely in my mind).

As a side note, your gun is near the best serial number data I have for end of 1902 - so it doesn't appear that fancy stock/checkering/buttplate would slow a gun down much from being shipped. Engraving apparently does.

Don't pictures like those usually come tri-folded with staples in the middle - or am I thinking of that Heffner magazine?

Mine is 24.4xx, B engraved, flame checkering, 26" round barrel, no pistol grip, plastic BP, high grade wood. David

Process, process, process.
Speculation but, Savage likely manufactured a high percentage of rifles to a forecast per month. Standard models as advertised. They probably also had a "special order" production line so as not to upset normal production.

Beyond that it depends upon what Savage had for finished parts, ready to be assembled as a special order rifles.
Speculation again but, if they stocked all flavors of unfinished wood they could pretty easily pull the wood per work order and have it checked, finished or whatever. Fit it to a finished receiver, test, inspect and done. Days.

Engraving is done on complete and inspected receivers that were unfinished. So they likely had white receivers ready to go as well. The hand engraving (no air tools) took some time, but, I suspect a guy like Tue could knock out pattern A's & B's fairly quickly. Days not weeks. The advanced more complex patterns C-G and extras may take weeks, then need to be mated with appropriate wood, etc. Weeks.

Presentation rifles with custom patterns, gold inlays, etc. would take much much more time, but not many ever produced. I think the Gough/Iran rifle normally would have taken 3-4 months to complete. It was expedited 24/7 and completed in 6 weeks.

Things I've read about the early Savage factory sounds like it was smooth runnibng machine with much process and systems in place to monitor all aspects of production. So they could produce ~1000 rifles per month and dozens of special orders rifles as well.

Them flames are freaking awesomeness!

Thats very low. Much lower than i expected, especially if its not engraved.

Rory, thought I had a letter on it but can't find it. As far as the higher grades taking a long time goes, my "F" engraved serial # 211xx was finished in 1901 and not shipped until 1906. It was possibly a factory display rifle or could it have taken that long. The letter says that it was originally a 30-30 with a half octagon barrel but the barrel was changed to full octagon .303 before being shipped to the owner Luke M. Allen. Allen's name is engraved on the bottom of the receiver. David

Found the letter. It "...was completed and accepted from the factory to the warehouse July 1, 1901." "...it was shipped March 4, 1902 to the 'New York Show'. There are no other entries for additional shipments or disposition. This rifle was apparently used as as office sample." This is a quote from the JTC letter. David

Flame checkering in 1901? That confuses things a lot, actually. But, what else is new in Savage land, eh?

With Savage never say never. Maybe it was a prototype. they did send it to the New York show.

Possible.. but one also can't rule out that it was sent back for the flame checkering and they just didn't make a job order listing. Not likely.. but as you say, never say never. It's obviously factory.

Was hoping you'd make it to Tulsa this year. With the snow storm I drove through in Kansas on the way home, you'd have felt right at home.

Why is it thought flame checking would/should be at a later date?

It's not in the early catalogs. First shows up in the 1905 catalogs, as far I've been able to track down. There was an earlier B style checkering which was a fleur-de-lis pattern, and it went away when the flame checkering showed up and the flame checkering became the B pattern (well.. it disappeared from the catalogs, but continued to show up on some guns for a while).

The Leader Grade picture in the 1904 catalog even has the fleur-de-lis pattern, but you can't believe catalog pictures...

The first checkering was the "$5" which became the "A" then the "A3".
Then the "$8" which became the "B" in the fleur-de-lis pattern which later changed to the flame pattern and the "C" .
Then the "AA" which became the "A2".
Lastly the "A5" and Carved were offered.

That is what is in the catalogs. Doesn't mean that they were not available earlier or that you couldn't have other patterns.

Bark Eater has an 1899 serial # 1003X with Flame checkering half round half octagon

This gun left the factory on Jan 23,1899 to William Read an Son Boston Mass so say the letter from Roe Clark

Soooo,it seems both styles of flame checkering could be had thru 1905! verrry interesting!