My first centerfire rifle has come home!

Yesterday I went to the range with my younger brother and we had a blast shooting a variety of pistols, both bottom feeders and revolvers and had a great time. While taking a break during shooting, my brother asked me if I wanted the old Savage 340-C 22 Hornet that we all started out shooting with. He had inherited it when my Dad had passed. This Savage was the first centerfire gun I had ever shot and went deer hunting with. I never did get a chance to shoot a deer with it (I hunted with my Dad who was backup with an 06 if I would have screwed up the shot) but had a great time at the range with it. I remember being able to shoot dime size groups at 100 yards with that rifle, which had a Weaver K6 mounted on it. After I upgraded to a real deer caliber rifle, Dad broke in my 2 younger brothers with the old Hornet and finally it ended back in his gun cabinet until he passed. So, since the 90's, my younger brother has owned the gun and kept as it was from back in the early 60's.

So anyways, after finishing our range trip yesterday I followed my brother to his house and he gave me the gun, 2 extra mags, several boxes of ammo and spent cases and some reloading dies.

Now I need to get over to the range and get reacquainted with the old gun. The scope still looks reasonably clear too.

BTW, I can't find a serial number on it either. I know this gun dates from well before the 68 GCA, but thought centerfire guns had to have a serial number on them. It's not a biggie, but I am curious.

There are a number of rifles without serial numbers. I would often have to go by the pawn shops to verify when the ticket would state NVSN.

Sometimes I could locate the number but more often it just wasn’t there.

There is no serial number on the older Pre-68 guns. Savage used a letter as a date code, some are plane and some are in a circle. My current 340 is from 1958. I had 1 of 5 stainless bull barrel Anschutz 54's in the US. It had been made for the 2002 Show circuit (SHOT show, NRA convention and others) And has killer grain in the entire stock! The 340 would shoot 1/8 to 1/4 inch groups with Hornady V-Max ammo the Anschutz was 1/2 to 3/4" This is my third (and last) 340 Hornet, the only hornet I ever saw shoot better was a Savage 219 single shot! I think the 26" barrel had a lot to do with that!

Ivan

It sounds like that gun comes with some great memories. I'm glad for ya and good to hear it's staying in the family!

These are the Savage/Stevens date codes. The letter is sometimes in a circle, sometimes not.

A 1949
B 1950
C 1951
D 1952
E 1953
F 1954
G 1955
H 1956
I 1957
J 1958
K1959
L 1960
M 1961
N 1962
P 1963
R 1964
S 1965
T 1966
U 1967
V 1968
W 1969
X 1970
Y 1971
Z 1972

Thank you for posting that Ivan. I found a "F" along with a number in a circle on the barrel right by the barrel nut, so it must have been shipped or built in 1954. That puts the gun about 2 years older than me!

And yes, that gun definitely brings back some good memories of being at the range with Dad and also the first few deer hunts I made with my Dad as a 7-8 year old kid, 75Vette.

I've also been knocking around the idea of getting my gunsmith to ream the chamber to a K-Hornet. Not so much for the extra velocity since the cartridge won't gain more than 200 fps or so, but more for the fact that brass should last longer with the straight case walls and sharper shoulder. What experience do any of you guys have with the K-Hornet and is it worth the cost for the longer brass life and marginal velocity gains?

Glad to hear you have your old rifle back. Please don't shoot any deer with it. The Hornet, even the K-Hornet, just doesn't have the oomph.

Squarebutt said:

Glad to hear you have your old rifle back. Please don't shoot any deer with it. The Hornet, even the K-Hornet, just doesn't have the oomph.

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Oh, I know that. Even back when I was a kid, the only shot I would have tried with it would have been a neck or head shot with that little cartridge. Plus, Dad was with me and would have been drawing a bead on the deer too, with his sporterized Springfield.

Centerfire rifles were indeed supposed to be ser#'d by their mfg'r before the GCA 68. All caliber handguns as well.
The only firearms exempt from ser#'s at that time were .22rf long guns and Shotguns.,,though some mfg'rs chose to ser# those two as well.

GCA68 only added those 2 latter groups to be ser#'d,,so that 'all firearms would require a manufacturers ser#'.

That being said, Savage seemed to be quite loose with their ser#ing especially with the Model 340 and the Model 219.
Some say the 219 was built on the Model 220 shotgun action, so because of that (being a shotgun) it didn't actually need a ser# pre'68.
That's a pretty loose interpretation, but OK.
The Model 340 was never anything but a centerfire rifle and they should all have been ser#'d before GCA 68.
The fact that Savage/Stevens/Fox planted a date-code on their guns including the Savage 99 starting in 1949 has nothing to do with it. The date code is still not a mfg'rs identifying ser#.

Most of the Model340's pre68 are in fact ser#'d. Then a few went thru un#'d. Many of those seem to be on the 340C model. The 'C" is supposed to ID the 340 Model gun as a Carbine bbl length. But even that doesn't hold true many times with the gun as it came from the factory. 18 1/2" bbls,,20" bbls,,about anything can show up on a 340C.
Savage/Stevens/Fox was in quite bad shape about then and managment, production, sales,,everything about the company was constantly changing. Not always for the better.

FWIW, Marlin got on the bad side of the IRS (The Fed agency in charge of the Federal Firearms act,,pre GCA68) when they allowed about 4000 Marlin Levermatic centerfire rifles out the door without ser#'s on them in the early 60's.
These were the first of the centerfire Levermatics. Marlin had been making the cal .22RF Levermatic for some time and were NOT at that time ser#'g them.
Though early on they had ser#'d them, the bean counters saw a way to save a few pennies by side stepping that process and it was entirely legal in the pre68 days.

When the Centerfire Levermatics came down the line, they were just passed right by the ser# rollmark press just like the .22 versions. No one ever said anything about putting a ser# on them!
So out the door to America went just over 4000 of them before someone caught the gaff.
IRS agents not happy.
Marlin front office not happy.
This was in the early 60's.
The 'fix' was to issue a recall of the unser#'d rifles. Send them back to Marlin to have a legal mfg'rs ser# stamped on it.
Very few ever came back. If they did, the # was a simple hand stamp with single stamps on the left side of the rec'vr front. Nice job...
A list kept in the Repair Dept. then recorded the rifle, the new# applied, owner, date, ect.
I can only recall one coming in when I was there in the early 70's. AFAIK the recall was still in effect as long as MArlin was still MArlin.
I was told that the new owners now consider the the whole thing not an issue and repeat the Wikidedia line of 'guns didn't require a ser# before 1968',,which is misleading at best.

The 340 is a decent little rifle.
I'd probably leave a Hornet in it's orig chambering, but that's just me.

The 22Hornet is a fun caliber, not loud and reloading is easy. Once the brass is fire formed, neck size only. Cases will last much longer. Mine is a 219C.

Muddocktor, please do not ream you 340 to K-Hornet. The chances are, you will upset to fine barrel harmonics are just too great, and that great shooter will become a HO-HUM rifle!

As to brass life. I've been seriously trying to get .25MOA accuracy out of Hornet since 1980! Winchester & Remington brass just were not up to it! Hornady came along with the 35 grain V-Max bullet and ALL NEW BRASS and we hit the threshold of good accuracy. Then the quality of Hornady brass suffered. Then Nosler and Midway came to the rescue. I bought 250 piece bags of Nosler Hornet brass and with AA1680 powder, Fed 205M or Rem 6 1/2 primers, and Hornady 35 gr V-Max bullets I started seeing .1 MOA groups on occasion and sub.2 MOA as an everyday normal!

GET SOME GOOD BRASS.

I had 3 sets of 22 Hornet dies (2 by RCBS and 1 by Lyman) all from before 1975. I bought out another shooter's 221 Fireball and 22 Hornet dies These were Forester Bench Rest Dies. To be honest I don't know if it is the good brass the great dies or both. But I am making ammo that is at last truly worthy of my guns. I already had a scope that most thought was way over powered and way too big for Hornet (4-12x50mm). Head shots on Chipmunks at 250 yards is a normal day now! These are the 3100 fps factory duplication loads, not some Bunnyfart load!

Do all the little tricks, like you are going for the Bench Rest National Championship, and your 340 will perform like a BR gun!

A note on Nosler Hornet brass. The two 250 round bags I bought, say on the package they need "Preped" before loading. After FL sizing I checked the overall length, 2 cases needed trimmed and 3 were short. In other words 495 out of 500 were not off by 1/1000"!` All 500 weighed the same to the tenth of a grain! Neck wall thickness was .010" on all 500! I also de-burred the flash holes and uniformed the pockets, but the trimmings were almost nothing! That is some good brass!!! The Fireball brass was 100 count boxes and said it was "Ready to load" and it was perfect to the abilities of my instruments!

One of the guy I hang out with has been on 5 national championship shooting teams and was one of the original Army Marksmanship Unit team members, He drilled it in my head, shooting composes of three things 1) the shooter, 2) the rifle, & 3) the ammo! He went on to say, you Cannot and Will Not have good ammo without good brass! (I have added from my experience that good bullets and good dies are also required!)

Ivan

ancient-one said:

The 22Hornet is a fun caliber, not loud and reloading is easy. Once the brass is fire formed, neck size only. Cases will last much longer. Mine is a 219C.

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I was in a LGS this past summer, and saw a 219 Hornet with a second 20 gauge barrel. I went back the next day to try and negotiate a better cash price. I walked in the door and one of my "Thursday Night Crowd" was holding the 219. I know he is already a Hornet shooter, because we have discussed the merits of our 340 Savages! We have something else in common, we have grandsons! I knew he would never set that rifle down until he owned it!

This 219 had grooves for a scope, like a 22. The one I had in the late 80's was drilled and tapped for a Weaver base.

Story Time: In 1989 my BFF and his wife were house sitting her boss's very nice home for a few weeks in the fall! I had just bought my second 340 in Hornet (also a 50's gun with no SN.) While at the store we installed the Weaver 2 Piece scope base and a used 4 power Weaver scope and bore sighted. (I also bought 2 boxes of Remington ammo) My wife and I were invited to a gourmet dinner the "Estate" so we drove there with the gun still in the car. When we arrived we got the 50 cent tour. Dinner was still half an hour away, so I said I would like to finish zeroing my new purchase in. T
"The Estate" has a deck that cantilevers out over a good sized wooded ravine with a shooting bench! I got the 340 zeroed for 75 yards, and we noticed a pistol sized Ram target at 75 yards off to the left. With permission I took a shot, and missed, and saw the leaves move behind it. Took a second shot and had the same results, the third shot had the same results. So we walked out to the Ram and the were 3 nice little holes through the 1/4" plate in a triangle about 5/8" apart. That was pretty good for me at the time. The gun came with a 1903 leather strap and I had fired offhand. I had offered to replace the Ram target, but the owner was a revolver guy and was intrigued with the penetration power of the Hornet!

I sold that gun 2 weeks after I bought my current 340. I sold it to the owner of "The Estate"! Since then he has sold his business and move much further out from town. He still has my second 340 and uses it frequently to thin the varmints around the new "Grand Estate."

Why would I sell such a wonderful gun? You can't keep them all! The third 340 Hornet has a pretty nice grained Black Walnut stock, that has been worked into the most graceful Schnabel fore end, and perfect wrist! It has proven to be The Perfect Stalking Rifle.

Ivan

P.S. I have had several 340 Savages that were post 1968, in 30-30 and 222, I never kept them long, they just didn't have the "Soul" of the 1950's guns. BTW the 340 introduced as the Stevens 325 in 1947 and the Savage 340 in 1949 and was discontinued in 1983, but there is a break in production in the 60's (possibly from 1959 to 1970)

Mine has the grooves for the scope. In fact it came with an El Paso made 2.5-7 Weaver scope. The scope is as clear as the day it was made. The only thing that was missing was the scope adjustment caps. I ordered them from the repair place in Tulsa and they sent them for free. The whole package is in excellent shape for it's age. I wish that I would have gotten it twenty or thirty years ago so that I could have enjoyed it more.

Getting an old friend back home always feel good...even if he wasn't that far away.
Congrats;I'm happy for you.