Savage 99 restification project

[Ian]

If chopping up a priceless, 99% original, pre-WWI rifle bothers you, fear not. While I'd love to just fix what's there, and have indeed tried, the sewer-pipe, magnetite bore and beat-up wood is just too bad.

While I'm at it, might as well make something I really like, so the replacement barrel will get threaded for a suppressor, profiled down to match the original, and be radiused up to to the thread shoulder at the muzzle end. I might shorten it down a little also, maybe to 18" or so.

The comb is far too low for my Injun cheek bones, especially with suppressor-height sights. The forearm is too narrow for my liking, and the straight angle of the profile bothers me, so I'm going to re-stock the thing and do some nice checkering. Since the original butt plate is broken into several pieces, and I like a crescent steel plate on a woods rifle, the plan is to buy a steel casting and fit it to the new stock.

Stock wood is still on the fence. I have some native, black cherrywood which makes a fabulous stock but is prone to chipping and may not be the best for the buttstock design of the 99, so I haven't settled on quite what to use yet.

Will do a boiled linseed oil finish on the wood and the barrel/trigger/screws/butt plate will be rust blued. Receiver should be rust-blued for durability, but I'm such a sucker for color case hardened receivers that I may do an acid color on it and the lever just for appearance. We'll see....

So here's the beginnings:

 

[freebullet]

Dang...that looks better than both of the examples seen recently just the way it sits.

Not a fan of rust blue.

Sounds like you have a good plan, & I know your capable. Should be nice any way you choose.

 

[Ian]

If I don't wreck it getting the barrel off it might turn out decent. So far no luck, can't get a grip on that sharply-tapered barrel. Tomorrow I'll get either wet leather or epoxy involved, resin and aluminum isn't doing the trick, though it has supported my whole body weight bearing down on the action wrench before it slipped (somewhere around 250 lb/ft factoring handle length). If the epoxy-bedded blocks in the barrel vise and a little propane heat on the receiver ring don't work, the plan is to cut a groove around the barrel with a hack saw just a tiny bit ahead of the receiver to relieve the pressure from the shoulder. If that doesn't work, I'll have to cut the barrel off leaving about an inch sticking out and and split it from the inside with an air saw, then weld a nut on the stub and blip it with an impact wrench.

 

[Missionary]

Good morning
Have at it ! That is your rifle.
I do read with enthusiasm your efforts to get that barrel off. Have on occasions had interesting barrel moments. Soaking in tranny fliuid / torch took care of all so far. Never got to hacksawing or welding. But have a Mauser that needs to be a 338 Fed then a 338-06 that is going to have to be persuaded again next time north.
What will be the new caliber ? Staying with a caliber .30 something ?
I do await the finish. Have an old flinter stocked in Cherry that is fine to hold. Woods are different to the touch.

 

[RKJ]

I agree with Missionary, It looks fine to me, but bet it will look just as good when you're finished. I enjoy seeing folks rework an old rifle. I wish I had the skill and patience bur I don't (either one). I look forward to watching as it progresses.

 

[oscarflytyer]

since you are restocking, acraglas 'bed' the butt stock/action surface to keep the stock from splitting.

 

[Ian]

Here's a shot of the muzzle I cleaned up on the lathe:




Here's a shot of the tang where I'd like to mount an aperture sight:

 

[Ian]

I finally got the barrel off. Epoxy, wet leather, sawing around the barrel to relieve shoulder clamp load, nothing worked to grip the barrel, so I ended up welding a bar to the barrel and locking it into a pocket in the frame of my 743 Bobcat, then used a cheater pipe on the action wrench handle. With some more heat it finally cracked loose to reveal Acme threads! No wonder it was bee-atch.

The machinists here will note that the threads are cut all the way to the shoulder, which is no small feat and one I do not know how to duplicate with a single-point tool. Inside the receiver, there is a step where the rear face of the barrel almost touches, in fact it did touch in one place, leaving a shiny spot. The receiver threads are also cut all the way to the bottom, full depth. I have to wonder if the receiver ring wasn't forged over a threaded mandrel.



Close-up of the threads:

 

[Brad]

Would the new barrel require threads all the way to the shoulder on the barrel? Any harm to having a relief cut at the shoulder?

I wonder how many gunsmiths have a Bobcat to help with barrel removal?

 

[Ian]

I see no reason that relieving one full thread in the usual manner would be any issue. Still, it's going to be tedious to cut them on the new tenon. You can cheat a little with 60° vee threads, but with Acme you have a much wider cutter....unless you cheat again and make a narrow cutter and use the compound (set to zero) to dial in the width. The Bobcat was a better anchor than my bench vise.

Also, I did remember to check the headspace before tearing it apart and it closed on the no-go gauge. When I shook the rifle up and down the gauge would slap back and forth in the chamber. After pulling it apart and measuring with a depth mic, I calculated .008" between the no-go gauge and the bolt face. After doing that I feel a lot less guilty about ruining a bore-able barrel.

 

[waco]

Ian. I thought you had a new baby girl? You have way too much time on your hands my friend....
All kidding aside. Killer project man. Can't wait to see the end result!
You are indeed a crafty person.

 

[Brad]

Square threads are what scares me on redoing a Marlin. That and not having a barrel vise, action wrench, and lots of other tools.

I suppose I should just man up and dive in. I’m not the most mechanically inclined person so all of this is well outside my comfort zone.

 

[fiver]

just cut them normal then take the top off the threads.

 

[Pistolero]

.008 over the no go.... well that is well on out there. Sounds like you wouldn't want to be
whumping up hot loads with that old girl once you get her back in shape. I guess the strength
of the receiver and lockup aren't all that good if it stretched that much over the years.

Never did square threads, but doesn't seem to be too big a deal. Feed straight in
rather than down a 29 deg line, I would assume. Carefully grind a cutter to fit the
old bbl threads.

Bill

 

[Ian]

I haven't measured the threads to see what they actually are, I assumed Acme but they might be square, or proprietary. Hopefully my lathe will cut the required pitch, and I can grind a tool to match whatever they are exactly.

Walter, baby girl takes a lot of time, but not as much as she will soon when she get the hang of crawling! I steal an hour or two here or there to work on projects, momma is pretty worn out and needs all the help she can get, so we take turns giving each other "me time". I do a lot of typing with one hand these days....

 

[waco]

Walter, baby girl takes a lot of time, but not as much as she will soon when she get the hang of crawling!

You got that right bud! You just wait till those 12-16 years......good luck....

 

[Brad]

Yep, good luck.
Just remember what you were thinking about girls when you were a teenager.

 

[Ian]

Bill, I don't know that the action stretched. The rifle has been worked on a lot over the years, maybe the chamber was deepened a little to clean up rust? It sure looks like the bolt is short of the front receiver ring by about 1/16", though. The locking mechanism isn't worn and doesn't appear to have been worked on much [EDIT: Not true, as I found later, the bolt was worn and had been filed on where it locks against the lever nose, though the upper locking surfaces of bolt and receiver were in excellent condition with virtually no wear. Due to the angles of the locking surfaces, the bolt wasn't camming up and forward into battery quite as far as it should, hence excessive headspace]. Something about the 99 that impressed me was noting how the bolt face actually pokes up into a recess cut in the barrel, similar to the Remington 700's design.

 

[Pistolero]

Now seeing those blank screws in the sight holes, how about this one:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Marbles-S1...412551?hash=item1ed50ceb47:g:vlUAAOSwez5Z1pwZ

They are not cheap.

Bill

 

[Pistolero]

Have you looked at another one that vintage to see if that is normal? Maybe with that
model this was how they intended it.

Brad, back when I first got my lathe, I threaded successfully by going straight in
with a 60 hand ground cutter. Threads were fine. Then I got a book on running
a lathe for Christmas and learned how to do it "correctly".

I am pretty sure you would get the same results with a properly ground cutter.
I often fit stuff like that under 10X or greater magnification to see what the fit is like.

As to threading all the way to the shoulder......no clue, other than perhaps a special
threading lathe that indexed back to zero position, stopped, put the cutter into position and then
spin it. Never heard of that sort of a thing, but that doesn't mean much, hell of a lot
of stuff I never heard of.

Bill