my journey with an old savage mark II FSS

JNar · 05-23-2016, 04:31 PM

A number of years ago I bought my first gun, a used savage mark 2 FSS, with black plastic stock, but I did not shoot that much at the time. However, renewed interest and I found an incredibly beautiful laminate stock. Glad in mind: I took the gun to the track and had to my disappointment difficulties to shoot a tennis ball at 50 m. Well, the sight is broken, I assumed ... A 100 USD later I did put a secondhand sight on the rifle, this will make a difference I thought .. total disappointment - missed the tennis ball again. Ok, what to do next, I invested some energy on trying different ammo. Well, some types of ammunition was not quite as super bad as the other varieties - but impressed I was not. The tennis Ball laughed at me, and felt quite safe. Next step, the trigger pressure was a bit substandard, additionally in no way adjustable. Thanks to creative people with a great desire to publish everything they do on youtube I found a good way to mod the trigger mechanism so that the pressure became perfect - but the precision didn't get so darn much better of it. A little better, but I was still not satisfied.
Ok, I took courage and bedded the stock, the barrel was now completely floating and it felt really sucked plunger stuck in the "action" part of the gun. Hmmn, now was the tennis ball pretty easy to spot. But the table tennis ball usually survived on 50 meters. Half Satisfied I thought about giving up - either reconcile me with a half ****ty gun or hand it in at an expensive treatment at the gunsmith.

After a lot of googling, I realized that most guns have a recoil lug, ie a steel plate near the beginning of the pipe that is supposed to reduce recoil vibrations in the barrel. No such lug was present on my savage, but under the barrel (about 4 cm in front of the magazine) There is a small keyway (similar to the one you attach the ironsight to. I built a small bedded flange plunger that fits quite perfectly into this keyway (a simple little angle iron in brass and epoxy). Oh my gosh what a difference it was ... 8 shots hole in the hole at 50 meters, what a gun it has become. I'm so happy - it was a lot of work, but now I have a nice, easy, bedded gun with a fantastic trigger that shoots wonderfully with Fiocchi sporting ammo. Amazing what you can learn by never giving up.

JNar · 05-30-2016, 05:04 PM

Actually, having meassured the grouping of an eight rounds serie, it gave 0.29 inch average on 55 yds. I think it is good enough for this rather old non-accutrigger, one screw action-barrel holder (although I did add another screw, by extending one of the trigger mechanism screws). What do you think?
The thing that really improved the rifle was the "home made" recoil lug, i.e. The small metallic piece I did attach to the stock that did fit the milled croutch on the barrel just front of the action. I would say it made about 90% of the improvement.