Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors Have we talked about this before?

Ziggie Rentzke’s engraving, especially the scroll work, is very distinctive.
Very happy to own the gun.

I'm familiar with grizzlies. I will say that is a very german style rendition of a bear. Most American bears don't have one foreleg 2 foot higher than the other.

The lynx or bobcat is beautifully done. He was a master engraver, there's no doubt about it.

Yup. Boy I'd love to get a closeup look at that!

btw - it's a crouching mountain lion.

That's their take on it..

If I could ever own that rifle, I'd change my name to match the initials.

Does anyone know who owns it now?

How about this?...
After the move to Chicopee things were humming along nicely @ s.n. 500,000 and up.
In the early to mid 50's R&D begins work on other calibers that require a longer magazine.
R&D fabricates a quantity of peaces with a longer magazine, sequentially numbers them (~700,000) and begins work, evaluation, testing, etc.
As the designs are becoming mature and being formalized in preparation for production release Management decides to create a gap in serial numbers for shipment to differentiate this major design change and jumps to 900,000.
Or possibly a few 700k rifles were produced before the 900k change or a few R&D rifles leaked to the public or both. ??

I guess we have the rifles at this point, just not insight to understanding the whys and hows of Savage operations at the time.

This one says it was a R&D rifle, so it could be a prototype for the new internals to handle 243/308/358. I would guess they prototyped on something other than 900,000 guns. But did they use normal 700,000 series guns, or did they have guns they stamped RDxx or some such?

Owner of this would have to try to load a magazine full of 308's to find out.

The 700,000 serial numbers ended in the 780,000's, and we know a lot were produced in 300/250-3000 while the 243/308/358's were being made. So it's possible this was a prototype 243/308/358 receiver, but unknowable from what we see.

Whoever owns it has a sweet rifle.


PS: Nobody has asked why a gun with initials on it was in the R&D collection. I'm not quite sure how I understand that happening either. New owner dies before taking possession?

Poconojack emailed me a link to his original post, here it is: https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbt...y-engraved-savage-99-243-win#Post7357555

I believe Ziggie worked with the custom shop, not the R&D shop. Fug might have more to contribute..

No need to speculate....
Per JTC factory letter based on, “past conversations with my friend Roe Clark, Rentzke came from Germany after WW 11 and gained employment at Savage around 1956 or 1957. Roe also started at Savage in 1956. Rentzke did not work full time at engraving, but did other work believed to be in the engineering department. Roe also said that Rentzke left Savage very early in the 1960’s to become a teacher.”

The Savage Collector Community suffered a great loss when JTC retired as Savage Historian. Imho he is impossible to replace.

Don't really matter what anybody here thinks or has to contribute.

I think the letter speaks for itself.

JMO

There appears to be a little confusion here.
The OP can speak for himself, but,...

The OP was with regard to a 99F, .308, s.n. 9289xx, engraved, 900k/normal production although rare with engraving - there were no comments regarding this rifle.

A similar rifle was pointed out as part of the forum, 99F, .243, 928916, engraved, w/letter, 900k/normal production although rare with engraving - different rifle than the OP and Poconojack was kind enough to share a factory letter. Thank you for that. Very informative.

Then I stumbled upon a 99F, .308, s.n. 764145, engraved. 764xxx is not normal production as we know for a 99F/.308

The OP 9289xx went nowhere for the moment.
The factory letter was for the 99F/.243/928916 and neither the letter nor the rifle are in question.
#764xxx does not have a factory letter and has plenty of questions about it. 764xxx is not normal production for a 99F/.308 let alone an engraved one.
That is what I and others were talking about and possibly created some confusion among the 3 rifles.

Always something to be learned on the Savage Collector Forum.

The rifle Calhoun started this with appears to be the same rifle we dicussed here in 2017 ... SN was listed ast 928xxx at the time, and stock figuring looks the same.
https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/topics/12134021/1

Thanks Keith.
The wood is very pretty on both. Do we know the s.n.'s are the same?? I may have missed it.
Not that it's terribly important. Just trying to get a handle on how many mid-50's 99F's Siegfried Rentzschke worked on.

Not likely that we’ll ever know the exact number, but a post by cmhjohn in 2013 quoting from an original factory letter dated 2/2/83 from Roe Clark regarding rifles engraved by Rentzke states, “in any event there were only a very limited number of them, and consequently they are very desirable.”

I believe Rick has collected some info on the Rentzke guns.

Interesting topic.

I've read the factory letter for #500,001 and it too is a .308 though the rec'r dates to 1947. The LBC indicates manufacture 1960. And is Rentzschke engraved.

The above mentioned letter says Rentzschke worked at Savage/Chicopee ~1956 - 60 and did engraving similar to what we call "A" engraving and did some special rifles such as the One Millionth 99.

Examples of Rentzschke engraving for Savage

I have three of the lesser engraved rifles all from 928xxx-930xxx range, plus 500,001 and 1,000,000.

Then there is the question of who engraved the Savage president and VP rifles from 1967. Also rummers of a few other from that period handed out to special people.