In another thread Loggah asked about a December 1994 letter I received from Roe Clark regarding my RT. Here is the relevant text of the letter:

"There are several possibilities to explain your rifle; 1. It is possible that this rifle was made up for an employee, using whatever parts he found available. 2. A small quantity of rifles may have been assembled for a specific dealer or distributor. 3. Possibly it may have been assembled to reduce the amount of parts inventory, as the plant was to be removed to Chicopee Falls in 1946.
Production records show that this serial number, 4320XX was made shortly prior to November 1945.
This was not a standard offering in this caliber, nor style. The caliber .30/30 barrel must have come from the "Service" department, as this caliber was not at that time offered in the catalog.
I am sorry that I am unable to offer you any specific information for this unique rifle."

Unfortunately (in my opinion), this sheds no new light on the "RT". We now know that this is not a "unique" rifle, and there are enough of them to rule out something made up for an individual employee. His possibilities 2 and/or 3 are still relevant, I think. (If the sole purpose was to use up barrels on hand, why not just slap an EG forearm on it? So possibility 3 doesn't explain the "RT" forearm.)

3 could still possibly work under a couple scenarios.... if, a) originally the RT forearm was a batch prototype for the 99T, but they decided to change T design to what was ultimately used for the T forearm, and a several prototype (RT forearms) were left around in bin, or b) the RT forearm was as prototype style for a post-war R and they used them up.

One thing that is interesting about the RT. The forearms are all the same. But the barrel lengths are quite variable even within caliber. Some 22" some 24". Seems to be no rhyme or reason, so IMO they had a batch of the same forearms, for whatever reason, and they slapped whatever barrels they had on just to make a gun.

Remember, you couldn't hardly buy a hunting rifle for about 5 years during the war and right after the war American consumers were starving for hunting rifles so anything you could slap together in 1945 or 46 could be sold.

I can add RT 30-30 426606 with a 22 inch barrel. This is the only RT I have held in about 40 years of chasing Savages for my Dad and eventually for myself.

Maybe they ran out of forearms and whipped up a batch to go with the leftover parts they were assembling.

Boy has it been a long time since I posted on here... At one pointed I started keeping records of every "RT" that I ran across in a spreadsheet... most I have limited information but others I have a decent amount. In total I had recorded 33 (this was probably over only a year or two) and this includes the two mentioned above. Interestingly enough, most had a 22 inch barrel... I note just two with a 24" barrel and 1 with a 20" barrel (which was posted on this forum). All were between 422xxx and 432xxx with the exception of 3 outlyers that go as far as 445,7xx (the newest of which, 445,7xx, I personally owned and the forearm had a stamp of 432xxx on it). Most were 300s but interestingly enough, by far the second most common was the 30-30, then the 303 and last the 250. at 37, its probably not a statistically relevant sample set but it does sort of make sense that savage would be cleaning up old 30-30 and 303 barrels and that 300 would be the prevalent part of their availability.

My pure guess is this was the first of the postwar Rs utilizing old T forearms with simplified post war R checkering and whatever old barrels they had. All I have info on had a style 8 barrel address but I only few provided this detail and think that would be expected.

If someone wanted this spreadsheet, just IM me with an email address and I'll send it over.

I hope everyone is well in this new year!

It's great to see you again, Drew! Please don't be a stranger!


One has to consider the time period. The post-war years of gun making (and car building, and refrigerators, and...) were a lean time in terms of raw material availability coupled with higher demand from those millions of GI's returning home and wanting to make up for lost time, confounded by obsolete pre-war designs and parts bins full of the makings of them. Companies like Savage had no choice but to use up a lot of crap that in other circumstances would've just been tossed in the landfill, or suffer the consequences.

DREW!!!

I'd all but given you up for dead Buddy!

Glad you're back!

Randy

Welcome back!!

Along these lines my Grandfather bought a 1946 Ford F1 that didn't have a bed. He got it in 1949 from a woman who had just bought a new 1949 car. She wanted a car in 1946 when she bought the bed less pickup but the pickup was all she could get. She drove it around for 3 or 4 years without the bed and then got a car when they were more available. The pickup had a left over 6 cylinder military engine also. The RT's are not at all surprising. I just finished reading Robert Morgan's book "Memphis Belle". He mentioned how things were post WWII. It was a really interesting read.

Drew can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think 90% of the 99RT's occur from 429,xx and upwards. And the large majority fall into the range of 429,xxx to 432,xxx (80%'ish).

Throw in that we've seen a couple of actual 99T's with 99T checkering that occur up to 425,xxx (and a couple of pre-war 99R's if I remember correctly), and it's my guess that 99RT production was from 429,xxx upwards. I think the few earlier receivers with 99RT stocks were just receivers finished late - because we all know that many guns are finished out of serial number order.

I have a 99G in 30-30 that was once an 1899H in 22HP.

All work was done for a named Savage employee. The letter states all of it. Savage did all the work.

So just like any other manufacturer of firearms, there can be special inside orders for employees or family/friends of employees.

The issue isn’t whether something is factory or not, but whether if it can be proven to be done at the factory.

A gun won’t be hurt if it was provably redone at the factory. Actually, it could add value. But even without a letter most of us can look at a rifle and have a good idea if it was done at the factory or not. Not 100% of course, but a good idea. Savage had their way of doing things and those ways are often identifiable. Number one being, they did good work.

If it was done by the factory there was in some cases an RP stamp somewhere on the gun. RP is thought to be "repair" or "replace"

I have an 1899 H in 22 HP that letters as being returned to the factory for unspecified work. The serial number is stamped in very small font on the bottom of the barrel, and the serial number is also stamped on the web of the lever. Both serial numbers have an "R" suffix.

I usually fall down on he side of the fence that says the simplest answer is usually the correct answer. Having said that, I too think the factories were scouring the corners of their warehouses looking for parts to assemble when getting back into the swing of the consumer market after the war. This would be an interesting period to look for specimen 99s.