Insight on an old savage.

B

BerdanSS

New member
through my wife's use of facebook, I've stumbled across a new place that seems chock full of old guns for reasonable prices lately. I got a S&W at a great price a couple days ago, and then this pops up today. I have a weakness for old .22s, and since I just added a ton of Eley Target to my ammo stash today....it's calling my name.


Not much info other than: Savage, Old...and .22


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What the heck is it? Fair ballpark value (if any)
 
There was a series of Savage models made that way, with the barrel and receiver in one piece. The first, IIRC, was the Model 1919 (or 19), followed by the Model 19-33. The basic series was made up to 1946, with some 6000 made under military contract during WWII. That appears to be one of those, and they bring a premium.

The system works OK and was cheap to make, essentially involving making a barrel, then drilling out the rear end for the bolt, but had the drawback that if anything happened to the barrel, the whole thing had to be tossed. They were fairly popular with small bore target shooters in the 1920's and 1930's and were a lot less expensive than rifles from Winchester and Remington.

There is not a lot of collector interest. On value, I would guesstimate the .22 LR at $350 or so tops, with the military model at about $400 or so. (The 19H was made in .22 Hornet, and will bring $100 or so more.)

The magazines were not very sturdy and many rifles have the magazine lost or split; AFAIK, the magazines are unobtainable today.

Jim
 
Thank you sir. Now That I have a model number to put to it :) Well then, the sellers asking price of $300 doesn't see too out of line then if the bore is nice.


Military contract? It did strike me in a bit of an '03-A3 kinda way ;)
 
It looked to me like it might be Parkerized. Check to see if the US is on there anywhere. I have only seen one of the military guns but IIRC it did have that full length stock, but I don't remember if it had any military markings.

Jim
 
I used to have something very similar to that,it was a model 23a made late 20's to early 30's.was a fairly accurate 22lr.
 
Well, I think I'm going to pass. Now that I had a close model to look at (thank you James) I was able to do some serious research. I believe it may be a rebuild. Non of the several dozen examples I found had anything on them parkerized, including the ones that were the proposed military trainers (from what I read, they were somewhat of a flop and were not popular with the army) I did not find one single rifle with a bolt handle ball like this one.

Something that threw me as soon as I saw this one was the wear and age of the stock doesn't seem to match the barrel or bands. Also the ejection port on like 90% of the 2nd model + full stock 19s are the small rectangular port not the large oval found on this one which is the type used on the # 23 also.

Based off all that information, I believe this is a first model 1919. It has a couple of the traits I've seen on both early 1919s I've found that didn't seem to be on later models of the 1919 full stock.

Large oval ejection port
dovetailed marbles front sight
cock on close bolt.

I believe the bolt handle was reshaped and the, bolt barrel and bands were refinished. I don't really care for "bubba refinished" guns no matter how nice of a job was done. All that being said, everything I read said these were fairly rugged and quite accurate. I believe I can find better deal on an original condition shooter. Now that I started looking at them, I find them to be a fascinating looking rifle. I will be actively looking for one to add to the collection. Dang internet!...looks like I'll need more racks in the armory :D
 
I seen one recently at Cabela's in Grand Rapids MI, they were asking around 479 for it----- a bit steep. The tag on it called it an NRA Match .22, other reference I found said Mod 19 or 20. There were some variances in them, the one I saw had factory micrometer peep sight on the rear.
 
The micrometer rear sight came on the NRA National Match version.

The gun shown has apparently had the bolt handle ground down.
 
I wondered about that bolt handle, but there were options and I was not sure if that was one or if it was just a matter of an owner who wanted an advantage in timed or rapid fire. I think it was not just ground down, but either stretched or replaced.

Jim
 
I don't know about stretched. The sweep looks fairly similar to the ones I've seen over the years.

Replaced? Possibly. Can't remember if those bolt handles were integral with the bolt, brazed on, or were held in mechanically.
 
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