I feel lucky to have acquired a Savage 99 takedown in .300 Savage. Serial number on the receiver dates it to 1925. Serial number under butt-plate matches, but serial number on forearm is from an older gun. The bluing was in bad shape and an effort to clean it messed things up, so I re-blued it. That being said I have a nice old classic but not a high value collector specimen it seems. My old eyes (I'm 63 and wear bi-focals) could not see the factory dovetail rear sight, so I added a modern Marbles rear tang sight. As I try to sight it in for hunting I am uncovering what seems to be some serious issues. First, the factory tang holes are out of line. The rear hole is off, and about .03 to the left of where it should be. Since that is sort of the "middle" of the tang sight, with the actual sight rearward of that point, the sight is shifted left a good bit. At its lowest setting the aperture is about 1/4" higher that the front blade is compared to center of the bore, so it is shooting high. Additionally, the front sight and the dovetail slot for the factory rear sight that I removed are not lined up at the 12:00 position atop the barrel, but more like 1:00. Looking down the barrel this is an obvious flaw. the barrel screws into place and stops exactly where is seems that it should as far as the bolt extractor sliding right into the grove in the threads when closing the bolt.... but in that position the front sight is way off. As a result of a low front blade (i understand that I could perhaps get a higher one) and the tang sight kicked out to the rear left, the gun cant be sighted in as it is. With the marbles as low as it will adjust and as far right as it will adjust, it shoots 2-3 inches high and 2-3 inches left at 50 yards. Has anyone else seen and issue like this? Was this a common thing on barrel alignment on takedowns? Seems like if I COULD see well enough to use the factory rear sight it WOULD line up because it is "off" to the same degree as the front sight if that makes sense. I welcome any thoughts or experiences others may have had with this issue of barrel alignment. TIA!