Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors refinished early lever

I had a local gunsmith who is now semi-retired color case harden a couple pieces for me. I'm happy with how these came out. The lever is an early type to replace a chrome plated one on a custom engraved 1899. It had little original finish on the exposed part when I got it. The part of the lever normally inside the receiver still had a lot of color on it and I didn't polish any of that, the old finish was left as it was and it came out OK. I won't know if the lever warped any until installation, but I did try the pivot hole and a pin from another gun fits it. I don't know if the colors are close to the originals or not, but it should look a lot better than a chromed one.

I haven't put anything on the lever since I got it, I am thinking about trying to give it a coat of varnish, which I think was how they did the originals, so I don't want oil on it if I do that, but I don't know if varnish formulas available today will look the same.













The hammer is for a friend who has a nice long cartridge action Whitney-Kennedy saddle ring carbine that has the spur broken off. I tried a test fit on my Whitney and I found the hole is undersize, I didn't try this hammer on it before, so I'm not sure if it shrunk or if it started out the size it is. The pin in my gun is just over 1/4" at 0.254" and the hole in the 'new' hammer will just take a 0.250 drill bit. I ordered a 6.5 mm carbide drill bit (0.2559") to open it up a little. I've seen several Whitney's with broken hammer spurs and when a very nice hammer showed up on eBay several years ago it brought over $350 - my friend's losing bid.

They look nice to me. And not overly done.
Curious what the "before" may have looked like?? And the rest of the custom engraved rifle.

This looks great.

That lever is for this rifle -





...anyone looking for a chrome lever?

That's a pretty gun! And I like the lever, too many gunsmiths now overdo the colors. That will look like it belongs.

I think that lever will look very nice on that rifle. The chrome lever is too gaudy for my taste.

Beautiful rifle.

I've had good luck using clear lacquer. Spray can works but lacquer thinned with lacquer thinner works better, less thick/noticeable. (PIA doing it that way because it has to be sprayed. Been meaning to try dipping. Tried brushing on clear lacquer once (not on a gun part), what a fiasco.)

Lacquer has always been the preferred protectant, as far as I know. Never heard of anybody using varnish. Some guys just wax CCH'ed stuff - I did that with a CCH'ed Martini action and it has held up nicely (Renaissance Wax).

The case coloring came out well Gene. I think it will compliment your rifle very nicely.

Wow!! those are great !! I guess I better be careful with my Whitney,i didn't realize the hammers were that fragile.

Gene, how about a closeup of the engraving on the sides of the receiver?

That is probably the best match to the original Savage colors I've seen. Most of them are way over done.

Let us know how well the lever fits.

Wow! Love the stock work. Excellent project.

LHS

That looks smart

I've asked several times over the years, with no reply, if it was possible to CCH a part to look used vs the brightly colored "looks like new" finish that you usually see. That lever is the first that is close to what I had in mind. Very nice.

That is excellent! You could cerocoat the lever as another option. Would be very thin.

I've normally used clear lacquer over case coloring, but I've recently seen a couple with cera coat and they looked great.

That's a nice one alright. Now it would be nice to know on a print out of instructions just how the gunsmith did that job step by step. When I asked Turbull a question like that ,they just laughed . The way gyes are ruining rifles nowadays that precious information made available would save many from the pscycadelic look.

I finally got the levers swapped. It went in without any adjustment and closed the action smoothly with just enough tension to keep the lever from dropping. I did spray it with lacquer but I am not happy with the results, I did it three times, completely removing the previous attempts. I finally decided to just get it back together, at least for now. It did not come out very smooth but the light has to be at the right angle to see that so it looks good in the pictures.








I posted pictures of this gun before but here are some better ones of the engraving, it's hard to get the light right - these pictures do not show the color of the blue correctly, they make it look almost like there is no finish.






I thought I might not be able to get the stock off, I knew there was a repair but they used too much glue and it was stuck to one of the tangs making it almost impossible to get off. I scraped out the excess glue and the stock went back a lot easier than it came off. I had the buttplate off before, it's the original stock but you can see it originally had a shotgun butt, I think some of the grain on the toe must have been painted on to match the original since it looks like it's built up with Acraglas or something. The crescent buttplate has had the toe shortened slightly and curved in a little when compared to another.


-continued next post due to limit on the number of photos -

-continued from previous post -

The bolt is an oddity, it's a square back but there isn't a cocking indicator, or one on the rifle. It's also got a rebounding firing pin. I've only had early guns apart and have not seen anything like this on one before. The extended prong on the upper front is a milled feature integral with the bolt body. The condition of the bolt and other internals is amazing, there is almost no wear on anything, the bore is excellent too.











ADDED-- the serial number dates the gun to 1908

Switch to the cocking indicator was at serial number 90.000 in June, 1908. looks as though you have a pre-90,000 receiver and a post-90,000 bolt - except for the flat back. I wonder if they were able to grind the rounded back on a post-90,000 bolt flat to fit, or if yours is a one-off? Looking at a pre-90,000 vs post 90,000 - I bet they just ground the back of it flat.