Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors Savage No 15 WG sight

Due to recent questions about them, I looked at few No 15 sights to document some of the variations. Based on information from a discussion a few years ago these seem to have came into use about mid 1913. Catalog No 50 circa 1912 has only the No 14RM rear sight listed for 1899's. Catalog No 55 circa 1914 has the No 15WG as 'furnished on all Model 1899 rifles' and the No 14RM as 'adaptable to Model 1899 rifles'. In catalog No 60 from around ~1919 to 1920~ the No 20SR became the standard sight for 1899's and the No 15 WG was listed as an option - this is the last retail catalog to have the No 15 WG listed. It's listed in parts catalogs through Sept 1929 being dropped from the 1931 issue.

The early ones are stamped patent applied for and the dovetail is constructed by curling the sheetmetal of the main part of the sight over a piece of thicker metal, the later ones have a patent date and are made by folding the sheetmetal based on a method in a patent held by Stevens. I do not know which change came first, I've not seen one of early construction with a patent date, which I would expect, or a later one without. The same construction changes are seen on the No 21B (correction 25B) sight that was also used though 1920.

These sight have such small notches they do not look very usable, they also sit quite high requiring tall front sights that would be more prone to damage. The two modified ones have notches about as big as they can be made and still have the windage work.


The bottom one is an early 2 piece. The pictures do not show it well, but the bottom two are bright high polish blue and the top a duller matte like finish.

The patent for the No 15 (Anyone have a tang sight version?) and the Stevens patent -

The Stevens patent for folded construction would have been acquired by Savage with the purchase of Stevens in mid 1920, but it appears they may have started using it earlier. All of the No 20SR sights I've seen are of the Stevens patent construction, so unless the earliest ones were different construction, or Catalog No 61 is later than the mid 1920's, Savage did this before acquiring the patent.

The elevators are formed with a rounded bottom and then the inside is milled flat, some more than others, so the thickness varies, some are very thin in the middle. The ones with the small tabs are the later version.


These sights show up quite often, more than 6 in the last couple months on eBay. but they also show up quite often with modifications that you should watch for. The parts from the one on the left were used to repair another sight and the two on the left will make one good one.


This shows how thin the parts are in spots, often there is an attempt to make the sighting notch larger and deeper - this usually results in cutting into the fixed inner part. The thinnest part on top, over the windage screw center, is less than 0.025" thick (where the hole is in the one shown above), the bottom is only 0.31" thick at the sides and the flat between is very thin.


The most common modification is to the V, here's a recent example of this that was on eBay, it also had modifications to flatten the bottom... which didn't work out well.

Details are of the above sight, the V is filed deep into the fixed inner part, so no more windage adjustment, and the bottom was filed flat causing half of it to fall off allowing the rest to tilt -


All examples of these I've seen have rounded bottoms and I've wondered if they made a flat bottom version for octagon barrels or if the round bottom ones would work. Looking at a round bottom on an octagon barrel it does not look to work very well, even thought these are listed as 'furnished on all 1899's' I think they still would have had to use an earlier type sight on octagon barrels. The round bottom sits on the edges of the flat making them sit higher than on a round barrel and trying to flatten out the bottom would weaken the sight because the metal there is quite thin.

Well done Gene

Nice work again Gene

Sweet! Gene, here's a 1915 1899B, don't know if you can make out whether it's rounded or flat.

https://www.gunsamerica.com/UserImages/4275/988856104/wm_2736841.jpg

Thanks Gene!

Superb, as always. Thanks, Gene.

Added link to Misc Good Things

Thanks Gene!

Rory, blowing up that linked picture you can see a the curve of the elevator with it sitting on the edges of the barrel flat. A problem with sights is they got changed so often, it's sometimes hard to determine if they are the originals or not.

These two rifles, one from 1912 & one from 1913, just sold and both have the 1911 patent sight, so mid 1913 still looks like the time of the change to the No 15 WG.
SAVAGE-MODEL-1899/69166398
-MODEL-1899-22-HI-POWER-RIFLE/69166444

Here is some information on the earlier 1911 patent 'rack & pinion' sight and the No 21B sight that shows the same manufacturing changes as the No 15WG.

I've only seen one of the 1911 patent sight with out the patent stamp. Solid milled construction.



Many of these have the gear teeth damaged, rust from moisture where the teeth mesh will turn them into small nubs, bumping the exposed teeth will bend them over.


The screw head directly contacts the pinion gear, I've found that the friction tends to make the slider move down when the screw is loosened and up when tightened. It seems they made a very expensive sight thinking it would make adjusting easier, but accomplished exactly the opposite, possibly why these weren't used very long.

Here's the 25B sight - I had it wrong when in the original post as the 21B, relied on memory, (I, of all people, should know better than to trust everything GeneB posts, but hopefully none of you will catch on to that!).


I did'nt notice before that the No 25B and the No 15WG has the same patent date and consecutive patent numbers even thought the applications were filed over a year apart - they could have used the same stamp on both, but they didn't -


Here's the No 20SR that replaced the No 15WG about 1920, the earliest pictures show these with the fine adjustment elevator. This sight was used on almost all models from the 22's up.

They came in different heights and the tallest I've seen was used on the Model 1920's due to the large diameter receiver.



The early elevators were made by bending thin metal around a pin to create the threaded hole, you can see the seam down the center.

(maximum number of pictures reached, continued next post)

These sights totally match the Stevens patent so the general patent information on some may have been for the elevator, the patent for which was applied for Jan 1920.


an example on a Model 1920-


In catalog #68, sometime after August of 1933, a new sight appeared and the No 20 SR became the No 20 Flat-Top and the new sight became the No 20 Semi-Buckhorn. When first introduced they had gone back to having a fine adjustment slider - but no gears this time. The slider was still pictured in catalog #69 from 1935 but it was common for catalog pictures to not get updated right away so it may have been eliminated by then, they don't seem to be commonly seen with this feature. The next few catalogs do not have a page showing sights.

The parts catalogs do show the sights and match the pages in the retail catalogs, the 1934 page is the same as thein retail catalog #68, These show another name change in 1935 to the No 21 Semi-Buckhorn, the pictures did not changed. In the 1937 parts catalog the sight page pictures were updated to include the No 22 and the fine adjustment slider is gone on the 'now' No 21 Semi-Buckhorn.



These must have required a lot of hand finishing and all seem to vary slightly in thickness and contours. These are most robust sights they made.

The fine adjustment slider in the one on the left is a homemade replacement.