My brother recently gave me a 99E for my 60th birthday. The gun is in 300 Savage, and it's a nice shooter. It's in reasonably good shape with decent bluing, and the birch stock is OK.

The biggest problems I have with it are the recoil pad someone installed, and cracks in the tang portion of the stock. I could do a couple things. I want the recoil pad off of the gun, the stock hasn't been cut, so that is a plus, so I'd have to find a butt plate. Also, I'd have to try to repair the cracks, and then refinish the stock.

I've refinished birch stocks before, and they just never look quite right. And I don't want to get into a lot of repairs on a birch stock.

My other thought is to replace the existing stock with one that looks better and isn't cracked. So I'm asking for some suggestions. Being new to the Savage 99, I don't know what resources are out there for Savage parts.

Here are a few pics of the gun, and any help you can give me will be appreciated.

Not bad at all for a 99E, there are much worse ones out there. As to the buttplate, somebody here may have one or you can watch gunbroker and ebay until one shows up.

For new stocks.. not sure it's worth the money. You can pay to get that one duplicated, or again you can watch for a different stock to show up on an auction site. You can also buy stocks from someplace like gunstocksinc or Cabelas, but there is a LOT of final fitting that typically goes into those. One thing I'd suggest is to avoid putting much money into it since it doesn't take long to rack up as much money as you'd have spent on a new rifle.

One question tho. Why would you need to refinish the stock after repairing the crack? Tang cracks are easily fixed with Acraglas or other products.

Numrich has replacement stocks and forearms for Savage 99 rifles.:
http://www.gunpartscorp.com/

Here is a question. If I don't repair the cracks am I likely to have any additional problems. They seem to have been there for a while, so I doubt they are getting much bigger. How does the Acraglas work? I've refinished a lot of stocks, but never repaired cracks.

acraglass will work, guys here have used it.

If the crack extends to the wood behind the bottom tang, accuracy and precision most likely will be affected.

There is a sticky under 'misc useful info' on tang cracks you might find useful.

I was going to open my big mouth and say it'll be difficult to re-apply a buttplate on that stock as it has a straight cut, and the 99's had an "ess" curve on the stock and plate. I looked at my E in .243 and it has a straight cut stock - pic below of the stock before being refinished.

Do you want the correct buttplate back on it? Someone hereabouts may have one.

I have one of those butt plates in new condition. It will have to be fitted. Send me a personal message if you are interested.

Any epoxy will work to repair those cracks. It doesn't have to be Acraglass from Brown-"Give me all your money"-ell's. The stuff is just epoxy, nothing more, nothing less.

Since it's a post-mil birch stock, why not replace that garish pad and white line spacer with a new thin red solid rubber rifle pad, with a thin black backer and no white spacer. In the right circumstances they look as classy as anything else on a rifle.

Dang it man! Now you telling us Acraglass is not magic? Curses sent.

Loc-Tite 5 minute epoxy works good , ya just gotta be quick. Get it at Wal Mart , comes in a double syringe kinda thingy. I've used other brands , same , same. Just make sure it is for WOOD


Mike