From Reader Martin M:
On your recent subject of rifle work during free time, here’s mine. A Savage .22/.410, it was my dad’s Christmas present in 1940. He decorated the stock with rivets while working on a fire lookout in high school. The stock got old and oil-soaked, so I replaced it. I had to fit and finish the stock from a blank. This is how it came out:
Oh, that’s lovely. And from scratch? Even better.
I love those old Savage .22 single-shot rifles, and the .22/.410 combo even more so. As a knockaround gun for a kid to play with while out in the fields and woods, it’s incomparable.
I remember as a young boy seeing a Savage Model 24C in a hardware store and lusting after it – – .22 rimfire (took shorts, longs or long rifles) over a 20-gauge shotgun barrel, in a very short carbine length gun, with storage in the buttstock for ammo.