old .22 brand

E

ENC

New member
I have a question that might be impossible to answer but here goes.


I used to have a friend that had a 22 rifle that I was in love with. Now that I am older I would like to find out what it was and find one.

It had a tube magazine like on the current Marlins. It had fine iron sights and was suprisingly accurate to long distaces. This was in part due to the very long barrel for a .22 maybe about 24 inches.

it had a light color wood stock

Most notably was the action It was a semi-auto, but you could push the action handle in towards the left thus making the rifle a single shot. i was told this was to give more power to the bullet. the action handle was round with large grooves in it. On the left side of the weapon there was a hole in the housing for the action handle to go into thus locking it back and giving a manual means of noticing this.

I tend to suspect that it is an old Marlin but I have not been able to prove it and i thought of no-one better to ask than all of you

Thanks
Evan
 
It sounds like one of the .22 semi-autos made by Savage-Stevens under a bewildering variety of model numbers, including Savage Model 6, Springfield and Stevens Model 87 and 187, Springfield Model 80, and Stevens Model 987.

All were as you describe. They had the peculiar design of locking the bolt back when fired until the trigger was released, at which point the bolt went forward and the next trigger pull fired the next round.

Frankly, it was a terrible design. It was OK when it worked, which was infrequently, but the complex design went bad easily and gunsmiths went crazy trying to fix the darned things. I seem to recall that someone else (Marlin??) used the same design later and dropped it pretty quickly.

If they have not all been wrapped around trees, it should not be too hard to find one, but I would have to recommend buying it for sentimental reasons, not as a working .22 semi auto.

Jim
 
My best friend has one of those (or something similar). Jim is right, it is a Savage Stevens. I like it a lot. The only handicap is not having a detatchable box magazine. We never had a feed problem though. I have personally taken many a jackrabbit with it.
 
Definately a Savage. My grandfather had one and I remember him showing my the basics of riflery with it when I was only about 6. Never got to fire it tho' got me to thinking about the good old days. I called him to ask if I could borrow it for a weekend, and he can't remember what became of it. He thinks my uncle borrowed it about 10 yrs ago.:rolleyes: And so my hunt begins...
 
Thanks for the info
It sounds pretty solid for the Savage
I would still like to track one down
 
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