Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors Interesting A.O. Niedner .410 Barrel for Savage 99

I picked this up on Gunbroker.com a couple months ago and just got it back from my gunsmith last week. It's a .410 barrel for a 99 takedown made by A.O. Niedner of Dowagiac, Michigan. Has anybody ever seen one of these?

The barrel is 22" long and uses a standard barrel lug on the bottom of the barrel to attach to the forearm instead of the barrel band thumbscrew that the Savage-made .410 barrels used. It's a nicer looking arrangement I think. It took a little custom fitting by a smith to make it fit precisely, but it works great now. I shot it a bit this weekend, and it holds a decent pattern out to 20-25 yards.

I don't know much about Niedner, but from what I gather he was considered one of the top custom gunmakers of his era. His shop in Dowagiac turned out custon rifle barrels and bolt actions for folks like Townsend Whelen and Jack O'Connor. He is credited for developing the 25-06 cartridge, which was once a wildcat known as the .25 Niedner. Has anyone here ever seen any of his other work applied to Savages?

Rod

Very cool. First I've seen.

Rod, I asked at another forum where Michael Petrov posts, about this barrel. Michael wrote a book on pre war custom gun makers in the us, including a section on Niedner.

Here is a link to the thread, not alot of info came up but it does date the barrel to one of the first made in 1922.

http://www.doublegunshop.com/forums...;page=6&fpart=all&gonew=1#UNREAD

I once owned a Niedner barreled 1920 that had, somewhere along the line, belonged to both Lysle Kilbourn (the "K" in 22 K-Hornet) and Harvey Donaldson.

Jeff

Hadn't heard of a 410 barrel, but there was this thread a while back.

https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbth...&topic=0&Search=true#Post1615871

Pretty cool stuff... So much to learn...!!!


Mike...

http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZrgr223calQ2aQQfrppZ50QQfsopZ2QQfsooZ2QQrdZ0

Nice and what a good looking rifle! I think this would be much better that the screw down knop on the Reg. savage 410s as I had one and didnt think it was a very good design! John

Thanks for the info guys. The guy I bought the barrel from had worked in the Nieder shop after it ceased being a rifle shop and had switched to tool and die work. I'm going to contact him to see if he has any more info on the barrel.

Rod

I've never seen the likes of it. Very neat!

See if they will still make make them up. I would take one...!!!


Mike...


http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZrgr223calQ2aQQfrppZ50QQfsopZ2QQfsooZ2QQrdZ0

Hello--

I sent an e-mail to the seller of the barrel asking about its history. I received this response:

"I had a gun smithing business in Rock Springs Wyoming from �87 to �04. One day in about �90 one of my clients walked into my shop with a buckskin sleeve with your barrel in it. I asked him what he wanted me to do with it. He told me to keep it, said he�d had it for years and couldn�t remember how he got it and since I was the only one he�d ever met that had anything to do with Niedner that I should have it. I asked him if he ever had a gun to fit it on and he said no and he wasn�t really sure what it fit but he thought a �99. I thanked him and that was the last I ever saw the gentleman. Now I had it. It was novel and at the time I wasn�t sure what it was other than it sure should fit a �99. It laid on my desk about a week then was relegated to a shelf. When I shut down my shop I dug it out and really tried to figure out just what I had. A tight bore and a tight chamber which I thought might be for some metallic cartridge case hand loaded with bird shot. I eventually found that the old .410�s were somewhat smaller than they are today. Way before SAAMI entered the picture.

Niedner as a custom gun operation really was pretty much done when world war two hit. They got a contract from Inland to manufacture M1 carbine front sights and did for the duration of the war and yes I was told that some custom work was done even then,don�t know for sure however. After the war things never really got going for them. I think it had something to do with profit adjustment after the war. Anyway, I think by �49 or �50 Niedner as a gun company ceased operations. The gentleman that purchased Niedner did so about the time WW2 began and was the one that got the contract from Inland to manufacture the carbine front sights. After the company shut down he started a shop by Edwardsburg Michigan and it was under the Niedner name but in a few years he bought into the Fox Machine Company and moved back to Dowagiac and The company became the Fox-Niedner company. I started work for them in �59 left and went back in �63-�65, about 5 years total. 1961-�62 I worked at Weatherby�s in Southgate California, another story!

I was born (�37) and raised in Dowagiac. My father was a confirmed hunter and was dragging me around the woods from the time I was about five. When I was nine my parents gave me a little .410 side by side hammer gun it was chambered 2 �� and we (dad) had it chambered 3��. One night after supper he took me and the little shot gun up to what was left of Niedners and one of the workers there chambered it while we watched, he was a friend of dad�s. I never forgot that and turned into a hopeless gun bug. I never met Adolph Niedner for I was very young when he left us but I did meet quite a few of the people that worked there. A couple of them were machinists that resurfaced for some of the Fox-Niedner era, some were friends of my dad and some even became friends of mine. There were a lot of times that Niedner was talked about. One the most noted of the Niedner people that used to show up at the shop was Tom Shelhammer a really great custom stock maker. He�d show up looking for someone to do the little metal work jobs that exist from time to time in stock making. He was also a dear friend of the Niedner Owner.

Enough Rambling! All I can do is guess as to the history of your barrel. With all the prodding around I did I came up with nothing solid. The barrel internal dimensions kind of make me think it to be maybe a �20�s or �30�s item. Niedner started business in Dowagiac in �20 so that�s the earliest it could be. I don�t remember when �99 take downs appeared but that could help too. Niedner�s originally, in Dowagiac, was to be a barrel making company that got into building rifles that were sent to different points of the world, mostly custom I think. I�d believe as a custom shop that production runs of any thing would be quite small and considering that in the years I�ve been fiddling around with guns it was the one and only one I�ve ever seen or heard of I too would think them,or it, to be rare. The Savage barrels that were made(.410) were made to be used without a fore end. They�re rare! Good ones I�ve seen advertised at $750. I wish I knew more to help you with but that�s it."

That is a very interesting piece of history. Would love to know if there are others out there waiting to be discovered.