For the owner who is not a gunsmith, field stripping is as far as disassembly should go- more than that and the gun really should go to a gunsmith. To field strip:
1) Open the breech and make sure the gun is unloaded. Close the breech.
2) Pull down gently on the front of the forearm to hinge it down and remove it from the barrels, then from the front of the receiver.
3) Open the breech again, holding onto the barrels. With the barrels hinged all the way down, lift them back slightly, then up and off their pivot in the receiver. This will give you access to the bores, the extractor mechanism etc.
That should do for normal cleaning. If the gun has been soaked and you want to get to the inside of the receiver, or the gun needs serious 'deep cleaning,' that can be accomplished simply by removing the stock.
4) Remove the buttplate or recoil pad. You'll need a long shanked screwdriver to remove the stock bolt (#66 in the drawing linked below). When the stock bolt is removed, you can slide the stock to the rear off the receiver tangs.
5) Clean and relubricate the receiver without further disassembly. I usually soak such complex components in a solution of Simple Green and hot water to loosen sludge, then rinse them in hot water and shake out excess water. Residual heat from the hot water rinse should evaporate any remaining moisture, or a shot of WD40 (which is a water displacing product or degreaser, not a lubricant) and a few blasts of compressed air or 'canned' air should take care of it. Then lubricate all moving parts properly, dry the other components, apply a thin coat of RIG grease, Johnson's paste floor wax or the like to metal surfaces normally covered by the stock and forearm wood, and reassemble.
Don't forget to remove the fore-end iron (#51 in the drawing) from the forearm while you're at it, clean and dry its components and waterproof/rustproof them as well before reassembly.
There's an exploded drawing of the basic type at
http://www.urban-armory.com/diagrams/savagefo.htm . That doesn't mean you should try to detail strip it though...
hth,
lpl
