A Savage Attack On An Old Shotgun, Part One

Nobody has ever called the Savage/Stevens 311 a pretty gun. Pretty cheap maybe, but not pretty as in graceful, beautiful or elegant. As it came from the factory, it certainly wasn’t. Although discontinued by Savage in 1989, the ruggedly built 311 had along production run and is still readily available at a reasonable price. The advent of Cowboy Action shooting has revived interest in a lot of old shotguns and the Stevens 311 is no exception..

Rarely do I attend an event where there aren’t several ringing steel and doing it reliably. Inelegant they may be, but there is a certain beauty to a gun built this tough. One of my favorite things is to take mine to a shoot and have people Bottom Bottom ask what kind of shotgun I’m shooting. When I say a 311 they take a second look and say, "That’s not a 311." I smile and tell them it really is. Over the years I’ve customized mine a bit, both inside and out.

Changing the 311 from a frumpy old lady into an attractive companion is relatively easy and very rewarding. Let’s take a look at what I’ve done to mine and use that as a guide as to what you may want to do to yours. This project is going to involve both woodworking and metal work so let’s take them one at a time and see what we can accomplish.. First, we need to take the wood off the gun. To disassemble it, start by making sure the gun is unloaded.

With the action closed, remove the forend by inserting a finger under the very front of the forend and pull straight down. The forend should come free after moderate resistance. Place the forend on the bench and holding the barrels in your right hand, grasp the pistol grip in your left hand and use your left thumb to push the top lever all the way to the right. Move the barrels down like you were opening the gun normally and the barrels will separate from the receiver.

If you’re handicapped by being right handed, just reverse the hand position in these instructions. Sorry, I just couldn’t resist, now you know how us lefties feel reading instructions. To remove the buttstock from the receiver, remove the buttplate screws and the buttplate. You may find any number of holes drilled in the stock depending on when your gun was made.

Using a strong light, locate the hole that has a screw at the bottom of it and with along handled screwdriver, remove the through bolt and pull the stock straight back off the receiver. Now you should have the buttplate with screws, the stock, the

A replacement stock set in walnut, springs and a recoil pad will get us started. receiver, the barrels and the forend on the bench. Put the barrels, buttplate and receiver aside for now. We will get back to them later. My 311 is an early A model and came with a walnut stock. The later models were supplied with a hardwood stock and you can either work with the stock you have or, if you just have to have walnut, stocks and forends are available from Brownells (# 984-000-031AH) and Boyds.

There is plenty of wood to modify the stock into almost any configuration and length of pull you like. For example, by changing the angle of the wood from the toe of the butt to the back of the pistol grip, you can make the pistol grip stand proud. Next, the bottom of the grip can be flattened and a grip cap added.

By following the line of the wrist at the top and cutting back the comb you can steepening the angle, flute it and change the buttstock into the modern style similar to what Remington uses on their of shotguns. If you find the looks of a classic straight grip more to your liking, it is just as easy to remove the pistol grip with a rasp and carry the line of the bottom of the stock from the rear of the trigger guard all the way to the toe of the stock.

Once you have established that line, the stock is shaped with the rasp and then sanded and finished. Checkering always adds to the appearance of the stock but isn’t strictly necessary. Almost every stock refinishing job includes the addition of a recoil pad both to absorb recoil and to adjust the length of pull to the shooter.

Personally, I like the Pachmayr D752 Decelerator Old English style pad to complement the English style the brown pad blends in with the color of the walnut and the lack of exposed ribs on the side of the pad helps accent the grain of the stock rather than the design on the side of the pad. They are available in a number of thicknesses in either brown or black. The choice is up to you. Now we come to the forend. Early models came with a walnut semi splinter forend but some later models were supplied with a be a-

410 bore 311 in the classic bag style pistol grip. vertail style forend. The Fox model Bis a fancier version of the 311 and was supplied with a walnut stock and beavertail forend. The parts of the 311 and the Fox Bare totally interchangeable except for the Fox models BE and BSE that have ejectors.

After all these years you may find any combination of walnut and hardwood or even the early plastic stocks and forends on the gun, so it is necessary for you to decide if new wood is going to be part of the price of this project. It’s pretty hard to stretch the splinter forend into a beavertail style without the uses of more wood and some glue but reducing the beavertail to a splinter is easy enough.

First, mark the wood around the base of the forend metal so you don’t end up with a splinter forend smaller than the metal. Marking the back of the forend with the metal still attached gives you a guide as to how thin you can make the wood without having the forend metal standing above it. Remove the forend metal by removing all the screws holding it in place.

That may be two screws in the earlier guns, being a machine screw from the bottom of the forend that is threaded into the forend iron and a wood screw that runs down from the forend iron into the wood. In the newer models there are these same two screws in addition to two wood screws running into the wood at the very back of the forend, once again passing through the forend iron.

Taper the wood all the way from back to front working carefully around the inletting so you don’t break through the wood and are forced to save the job by inletting apiece of ivory (the top of an old piano key in my case) over the hole. Yes, Virginia, we all mess up now and again. The finished forend should be slim and evenly tapered on the sides and bottom. Do not do any work except light sanding on the top of the forend wood where it touches the barrels.

You want to leave this as it came from the factory so you don’t have a gap between barrels and wood. Sanding, finishing, checkering, carving, inlays, Schnabels, and/or forend tips can all be used to complete the exterior of the stock turning your Plane Jane factory or replacement stock into something that will get plenty of attention when you show it off to your buddies.

Next time, we’ll move into the interior where we can make improvements that can help knock down a couple more birds or, for you Cowboy action shooters, ring steel faster. AG Upper 410. Lower