Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors Savage Heat Treatment

I have a hard time envisioning Savage trying to save a dime by only heat treating some receivers for 10 years.

When did they start requiring heat treating those receivers? 30's? 40's?

Interesting Letters. Thanks Mike & George.

I interpret the message same as Rick99 although the some questions remain.

We understand that the Savage factory was fairly state-of-the-art 1903-1908, could mass produce product and I can envision process flow to accommodate this which included receiver treating of some sort at say ~ 10,000/year +/-.

With the addition of the 250-3000 in 1914 perhaps Savage realized some additional tempering was required and a new/different tempering process was available. Adding an additional process flow for 250-3000 product wouldn't be difficult and would only represent a small percentage of total production.

Add in the .300 savage in 1920 to the "250-3000" process flow and the percentage of total production of these two calibers would increase. The 250-3000 & .300 both became fairly popular in their day and while those production numbers increased, others likely fell.

At some point thereafter Savage decided to throw the switch and use only "the new" tempering process across the board. ?? Just a theory...

That's as cogent as as any theory yet, Rick.

It'll all be guesswork until somebody finds donor actions in 303 Savage and 250-3000 that are very near in each other in serial numbers from 1915 or so to have tested.

I know which I'd bet. Might be wrong, but especially in the 1910's Savage was all about quality. I just can't see them selling two different qualities of steel on their guns - especially since the receivers are totally interchangeable except for rotors/etc.

This would make logical sense; except then why would the 1954 letter say that if the factory did convert one under 266K, they tempered it as part of the conversion process.

Rick's theory makes sense on the limited data we have. To that theory, I'd add (based only on theory) that Savage may have modified the heat treatment again in the 50s when they introduced the Win calibers.

Heck, if we had the enigeering records, we might find out that they tweaked the heat treatment process many times over the years as technology evolved.

Makes sense to me. But the question I have is did Savage start heat treating their receivers at a certain date - meaning that all receivers prior to that date were not heat treated? I guess I could also ask if the 1895s were heat treated or if Savage just used the receivers in the condition in which they left the forge?

That's my gut feeling too, Keith. My guess is also that while the pre-266K receivers were plenty good enough and employed a good alloy/heat treatment protocol that has stood the test of time, metallurgists by 1954 had hit upon an even better heat treating protocol that made that alloy even stronger and prompted Savage to employ it retroactively at every opportunity. I do have to wonder though why they would have bothered since that $10 they charged for doing it couldn't possibly have covered the cost of stripping the action, re-heat treating it, and then bluing and re-assembling it- even in 1954 dollars.

Does anybody know if any of the other Big Makers did such things with their old guns, ie: did Winchester or Remington ever replace/re-heat treat old receivers as they came back for repair generations later?

Jeff, without knowing what steel alloy they used at any point in their history it would be difficult to tell. Reference my earlier post re: analyzing the steel and hardness.

Has anybody ever queried JTC about this? Having been there in the "old days" as (if I remember correctly) an inspector, he might have some insight.

Somebody should sit down with JTC and any other old codgers in their 80's-90's who worked at Savage in the 40's-80's and interview them in depth. Pick their brains clean of all esoteric knowledge they possess, for posterity. They would possess knowledge of the inner workings that long pre-dates their time there because as young guys they undoubtedly "shot the sh*t" with old guys who were nearing retirement then which would take the living history right back to the early days of the company. Publish said interviews and then we would have a definitive answer for a lot of these questions which we chase our tails over regularly here on this forum. I would rather see that then yet another coffee table book (as neat as they are).

I'm reminded of an "art film" recently done about the history of the National Brewing Company in Baltimore. (Brewers of National Bohemian, "Natty Boh".) after the hour long film there was a panel discussion with old employees of the now defunct brewery which was very entertaining and offered insight into the workings of the company, and dispelled many local myths and legends (and created more legends) about this iconic beer which helped define Baltimore in the 40's-80's.

That's my feeling.. all pre-266,000 receivers were created the same, but not up to 1954 standards.

I even have a sample sitting at home.. early 20's 99G in 300 that was redone by the factory in 1952. Well, at least it was restocked by the factory - I'm personally of the belief they also reblued/case colored the lever. Now I might have to strip the stock off and look for any odd stamps/etc.

I think the main point of all this being that we warn against converting rimmed caliber pre-266,000 actions to .250 or .300 Savage...or other similar non-Savage used rounds.

We haven't checked the receivers for special markings that I know of. Might be worth a look.

But Savage would do exactly that in 1961, with no mention of retempering or rebluing. I think Loggah posted this originally?

There is a $5 extra on some....maybe heat treating? I don't know.

I was referring to conversion outside of the factory. We don't know what they did at the factory when converting down through the years.

I think its interesting simply from the standpoint of identifying things that were done by the factory to rebuild, improve or modernize older 99s. I may be wrong, but it seems to me that there isn't a large or cohesive body of knowledge on such characteristics and many have likely been mistaken for mods that were done by individual owners or independent gunsmiths. I'm not one of the guys who would consider rechambering an older 99 to modern caliber in the first place.

Or just the cost of replacing all the internals rather than just barrel?

How far would $5 go in 1961? I wouldn't know, wasn't around yet.

I finally found a question on this thread that I can answer! From me to the next guy, just like today!

It would buy 25 to 30 gal of gasoline.

I was around in 61 you could buy 18 to 20 gal. of gas for $5.00 most gas customer's would only get one or two dollars

worth of gas at a time 6-7.00 would fill most cars.In 1963 we opened a new gas station had a gas war in our two gas station town

and sold gas for .23 a gal.

Minimum wage was $1.00 an hour. it went to $1.25 in '63 and my boss cut out my 4 hours of overtime.
In the earlier post I was referring to WWII. David