Howdy all and welcome aboard.I'm fortunate that here in central NC I have two gun shows this weekend in easy distance from mi casa. So I have been planning to go and have been looking at/for things to clean out in exchange for some "gun money"
As I was cleaning and sorting my eye lit on an old Savage scattergun I have had around for 25 or so years. Got it as a hand me down from Dad and I have shot it several times but it mostly just sat around for a number of reasons, not the least is that it is butt a@# ugly due to a huge Cutts Compensator someone had installed on it. It takes Lyman screw in choke tubes. I have 4
As I was looking it over I'm thinking...no collector value, butt ugly, carries like a 4' iron rail and probably not worth hauling around a show for someone to try and buy it for a c note.
So a brain storm hits....modify the gun and turn it into something I would enjoy and likely use. A sort barrel backup HD shotgun. So I get the barrel off and get most of the compensator off and as I'm looking it over it dawns on me that it has a flaming bomb ordinance mark. I check out the receiver and it is marked as well with ordanance marks and US mark.
Internet can be a wonderful thing, after some research here is what I am pretty sure I have.
Savage Model 720 20" Riot Gun that someone modified to accept this Cutts gizmo.
It appears that the "mating collar" (my terminology, bear with me) was mounted right on the end of a 20" barrel that in its original configuration had a bead on a small ramp front sight.
Serial# for my gun is 686xx which puts it just under the serial number range I have seen published 69k to 84k with somewhere around 14500 to 15000 of these recorded in USGI service.
I found one add where a buyer asked a specific questions regarding the number of asterisks marked on the barrel. Mine has three, as I understand it this would be correct for the riot length barrel.
So now that i've told the rest of the story, how about a little help.
I think this "mating collar" is probably silver soldered on. If so can it be removed leaving the barrel intact.
Bad news is that it does appear that the barrel was slotted back to the hole where thr front sight mounted. It appears that the "mating collar" has a key or index milling to fit this slot.
Any chance if the "mating collar" can be removed that a good smith could replace the front sight (if I could find one) and restore this to its original configuration.
Is there any chance that the Cutts addition was done by the military?? If I could document that I might be persuaded to leave it alone. If not I am going to move forward with plan A and have a pretty cool old warhorse.
Please share thoughts, ideas, opinions and information.