Stevens No 10 Target Pistol

[Sav22]

My first & only recently acquired No 10. It's an early gun with 'Pat. App'd For' stamped on the barrel and a serial number under 4000. Looking through catalogs I find it is not listed in a 1919 dated pocket catalog but is in a 1920 (the year Savage bought Stevens) and it is still listed in 1934 but a March 1935 price list has it marked discontinued even though it is still pictured in the catalog.

I had look at these over the years but had not looked very close at the action, I had always thought the cocking piece was directly linked to the firing pin and was a hammerless striker design, I now find out it is just linked to an internal hammer. There appears to be screws to adjust the trigger and hammer but I have not tried to do anything with them and the one that looks like it is for the trigger appears to be stacked in place by a prick punch on the side of the hole, don't know if this would have been done at the factory or not.

[Mad Dog]

You find some cool stuff don't you!

[824tsv]

Wow, where's the "like" button!!!
Very cool and interesting piece.

[Sav22]

The patents are all in George Lewis' name, he had a lot of patents for Stevens, some for complete guns and many for improvements. I have not found any patents that were assigned to J. Stevens after Savage Arms purchased them, all appear to have been assigned to Savage Arms after the mid-1920's and none from George Lewis, he seems to no longer have been with either company.


G. S. Lewis even designed the rear sight - I had not looked close at the rear sight, I thought it was only adjustable for windage, now from the patent drqawings I see it has an elevation adjustment... but I don't see how that can be adjusted without changing the windage, something I will have to play around with.

[Mad Dog]

So I'm guessing that Mr Lewis never followed over to the Savage Arms factory after Stevens was bought out?

This isn't the same Lewis as the machine gun is it?

[Sav22]

So I'm guessing that Mr Lewis never followed over to the Savage Arms factory after Stevens was bought out?

This isn't the same Lewis as the machine gun is it?

I have not found any patents with his name on them after the 1920 acquisition of Stevens by Savage Arms so it appears he may not have continued on with them, of is so, not as a major designer, he could have been kept on in another capacity.

He is not the Lewis of the Lewis machine gun, according to Wikipedia "The Lewis gun was invented by US Army colonel Issac Newton Lewis in 1911". As a little trivia note, in the 1930's original King Kong movie, the biplanes the shot him off the Empire State building appear to have forward firing Browning machine guns and rear swiveling Lewis machine guns. The airplanes are listed in some sources as a version of the Curtis Falcon and the armament describe as "Guns: 4 × forward-firing .30 in (7.62 mm) M1919 Browning machine guns and 2 × flexible 0.30 in (7.62 mm) Lewis machine guns on a Scarff ring."

[Mad Dog]

I can still remember the first King Kong, big difference from the other remakes.

Kong in the first one kind of reminds me of the abominable snowman from Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, haha.