Marble tang sight for Savage 99

[97th Signalman]

I just bought a new Marble tang sight made for the Savage 99. I have a fine old Savage 99 EG made in 1940. It has a perfect bore and about a 75 % finish with some nice old original wood. The semi-buckhorn sight is Ok but not the best for my 65 year-old eyes. I purchased a new Marble tang sight made to fit the original drilled tang on these rifles. Just as I have heard from some others on other sites, the sight base does not fit down on the metal of the tang because the wood of the stock wrist is proud of the tang and it wont let the sight base sit flat and tight to the metal. I really would like to fit this sight to this fine old rifle that is in original (meaning no bubba like mods or extra drilling) configuration. My dilemma is this:

Do I inlet the wood a bit so it won't interfere with the sight mounting?

OR: Do I make or have made some sort of shimming mounting adapter to fit under the sight base at the tang to get it up clear of the stock wrist behind the tang so I don't have to mess with the wood.

Has anyone else ever dealt with this issue? I am anti-bubba and I don't want to disfigure this fine old rifle.

I would appreciate your advice, experience, and opinions.

 

[jkingrph]

I had a similar problem. I had picked up a nice Mod.99 at a gun show and wanted a tang sight, so ordered one from Brownells. The problem was that the tang sight base did not match the curve of the rifle tang so that when it was installed the rear portion was about 1/8" above the rifle tang/stock . I sent it back as I was not anxious to try bending it to match and ruining a sight. Area of a required bend would have intersected one of the mounting screw holes and I could see a crease there. I'm like you, my 61 year old eyes do not see the semi buckhorns too well. This rifle came with a nice old Weaver K-4 with dot reticule so I will probably leave well enough alone although, I am not a big van of scopes on lever actions.

 

[97th Signalman]

Bending Marble sight base

Actually the tech rep at Marble advised me to bend my base. He said that it was soft steel and easy to bend. I did as he suggested and it worked pretty well. I also sanded the wood down a bit to make it flush with the metal around the tang. I restained the wood with Chestnut Ridge stain for US Military stocks. It came very close to the original color. I then rubbed in a few coats of tung oil and you cant tell where I did the work.

I still have one problem. The countersunk screws stall out in the tapped tang holes as the counsink tapered part of the screw head and some of the unthreaded portion of the screw shank bumps :banghead: into the tang metal before the countersunk head of the screw bottoms out in the sight base. In other words, I can't tighten the base to the tang. I added some copper shims under the tang. That works well enough but I am not sure that I like the look of the job with a visible gap under the tang.

I have emailed Marble for a suggestion as to how to deal with the mounting screw issue but I have not heard back yet.