Savage 219

Sometimes you see it coming, sometimes you don’t. That one customer or shooting buddy that walks in sheep faced with a bag or box in his hand. He will rarely admit that he took the gun apart and can’t get it back together. It always seems to be his kid or his brother-in-law that did it, but there it is, a bag that contains a bunch of gun parts. Sometimes it is simply, "Can you put this back together?" Other times it’s, "How much will you give me for this?" Either way, it is always trouble.

Most times it’s a cheap old gun you don’t really want and rarely are all the parts present but, hey, the guy is a regular or a friend so you swallow hard and buy the darned thing. I recently acquired a Savage 219 single shot in a bag in exactly this way. I have no interest in single shot shotguns but this one came with four barrels: .30-30, .22 Hornet, 12 gauge, and 20 gauge. There were also two stocks, four handguards, and a bunch of new parts. Being a sucker for a deal, I bought it.

The finish was mostly gone and the barrels had some light pitting on the outside but the bores were excellent. It seems the owner had decided the gun needed a makeover after many years of use and bought new parts and wood in an effort to rebuild it. He did a pretty good job refinishing the wood and I had no doubt, based on the high gloss finish, that he had finished it with Birchwood Casey Tru-Oil. Evidently, he came to grief when he tried reassembling the gun.

Never having seen the interior of a Savage 219, I soon learned why. Assembly can indeed be a bit tricky. If you’re lucky, you’re faced with a model that you have worked on before; if you’re not, you’re faced with figuring out exactly what goes where and in what order. This is where your Internet connection can save the day.

As we all know most guns have an order that the parts must be assembled in and it is infinitely easier to find an assembly guide online than to fumble around and learn the sequence by trial and error. In the case of the Savage 219 there was very little information readily available. None of my assembly/disassembly guides had any information on it and there was little available via the Internet.

Fortunately, I was able to locate a schematic on the Top The original stock showed someone’s attempt to personalize the gun by carving a deer on the stock. Bottom This was one of those rare instances when all the parts are actually present. Web and that at least showed me how all the parts went together. I laid the parts out on my bench in the same relationship they were in the schematic I found and that got me started.

I had to use trial and error in getting the sequence right and I probably had the gun together and apart four or five times before the sequence became clear. The secret is patience. If you are sure the parts you have come from the gun in front of you, don’t take a shortcut by filing or grinding apart that won’t fit. Accept that you are doing something wrong and figure it out.

In this case, I could not get the striker assembly and bridge into place without bending the firing pin and the legs on the bridge were too long to slide into the slots in the receiver. It took awhile for me to realize that the solution wasn’t shortening the legs of the bridge but assembling it with one leg in the slot in the lower frame for the trigger so the assembly lined up closer to center for it to slide into place.

I also learned that the sear must be positioned through the slot in the bridge before the bridge is tapped into place. Once assembled, everything seemed to be working and I congratulated myself until I noticed the firing pin protruding through the standing breach. Everything was working as it should. The firing pin retracted as the action was opened and the sear engaged the striker exactly as

A sanding block and abrasive paper was used to bring the finish to a shine, removing scratches and some light pitting. it should, but when the action was closed the sear slid out of the recess in the striker and the firing pin went forward. It turned out that everything was assembled correctly but the new striker was not fitted to the sear and would not hold the firing pin in the cocked position. Once more, I had to take the gun apart and fit the sear to the notch in the striker.

This wasn’t really unexpected but I tend not to cut on parts until I have seen how they interact in the gun. If you have done much trigger work you know that in many cases you will have the gun together and apart over and over as you adjust the sear engagement and adjust the angle until you achieve the trigger A .22 Hornet for varmints, .30-30 for deer, 20 gauge for upland game birds, and 12 gauge for waterfowl. pull you are looking for.

Many of the jigs available for the more popular guns like the 1911 make the job much easier, but for old guns the jigs simply don’t exist and it is a monumental waste of time to design and make a jig for a job you will probably never do again. Initially, after eyeballing the angle and making my first adjustment, the sear held the striker as it should but the trigger pull was a bit heavy, to say the least.

By cutting and trying and removing very small amounts of metal, adjusting the angle, and relying on stones rather than files at the end, I eventually got a nice clean 4.5 pound trigger. That may seem heavy to some but as an old Service Rifle shooter that is the weight I’m used to and comfortable with. I’m pretty sure this old dog could learn anew trick or two but then I ask myself, "Why?" It works for me so I’m not going to try fixing it. Your final step is to safety check the gun.

Make sure that with the safety off the sear won’t disengage and allow the gun to fire if dropped or bounced around. Once you are sure it is safe, finish the assembly and take the gun out and shoot it to ring out any problems you might have missed. Yes, it is possible you missed something in the shop that will show up at the range. Did you check the ejector? Did it work with a shell fired in this gun?

It’s better to find out now that it needs adjustment than in the field when you want to be shooting prairie dogs rather than gunsmithing. Besides, going to the range to check the gun and loads out is fun and isn’t that why we do this? Taking my Savage 219 "bag gun" to the range revealed it turned out to be a nice multi-barrel gun project as both centerfire calibers shoot very well. Both the .30-30 and .22 Hornet performed with the first load I tried.

This project turned someone else’s problem into a versatile and good shooting gun. AG