Vintage savage 29b .22 repair and minor restoration

[LeanMachine]

I bought this off of @Draco recently. He said it would not fire every time. The most consecutive shots he had ever got out of it was 9. I like old stuff and fixing things.

Initially i was not having many misfires but then they became more frequent. However the most pressing issue i was having was that when the slide was in the rear position nothing was restricting more than one bullet from coming out of the mag. I disassembled it and found the bullet stop to have just enogh wear on that I thought it might be unable to restrict feed anymore. I made a new one out of a large washer because it was the closest material i had to the 3mm thickness of the original part. I intentionally made it a little too wide and it would not allow a bullet past it at all. I then filed a little off at a time until it allowed a bullet to feed. Once it got it there, the feeding problem was solved. The slide rides directly against this part. The magazine spring tension moves it over into a slot in the slide as the pump is moved back. Once past that slot, it moves back into position. Over decades of use, the slide wore it down out of spec. Pic of new part i found online included. To be continued.

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[LeanMachine]

Next was the misfire issue. Like the cartridge stop, it showed some deformation on the end that i thought might possibly have made it too short. I welded a bit of additional material onto it and ground it back to shape. The misfires actually got worse at this point. They were maybe 10% before. Now they were about 30%. In retrospect i figured out that there is much more travel designed into the firing pin than is needed. It would have to wear down about 1/4" before not functioning due to length. I noticed that the pin was only striking the very outer edge of the cases. I got to looking at it and the pin was riding high in its slot. It is not fully contained so it has the ability to not be in ideal position if ther is any slop in the area it is contained in. I welded a tiny bead onto the top side and then ground it down a little at a time until it fit back in the slot. This extra material forced it down into the proper position. No more misfires. Very nice case strike indents. Unfortunately i did not take any pics of this process. I will say i was pretty shocked at how crudely made the firing pin was. Maybe it had been worked on before? Who knows.
I also managed to break AND lose the spring that returns the firing pin, so i made a new one from what the hardware store had.

To be continued.

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[LeanMachine]

When i first got it i thought the finish on the bottom metal and trigger assembly was very odd. Then i realized it was the same as the stock finish. No idea if it came like that from the factory or if someone did it along the way. I stripped it off with a fine wire wheel and reblued it.

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[LeanMachine]

The top part of the front sight was broken off. I welded some material into it and then ground it to shape. Unfortunately i removed too much material in the dialing in process. Not sure if i will just buy another one or weld on this one again.

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[LeanMachine]

It is a super cool old gun and i really enjoyed getting to figure out how it worked and how to fix it. Im going to kill a pile of squirrels with it. I also sanded the visible side of the bolt to pretty it up a bit.

If anyone has cool old firearm that is in need of some love, i would sure like to talk to you about taking it off your hands.

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[LeanMachine]

Forgot pic from after stripping but before blue.

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[bassmatt72]

Cool!! Good work figuring out the issues and coming up with a solution.