Savage No.4Mk.1*

[enfieldman]

I have a Savage No. 4 that`s in excellent shape. Nice wood with very few dings, all matching
#s incl. magazine. Shoots great!
She has a reddish coating type finish similar to that on some M1 Garands that i`ve seen.
My question is, from a collecting standpoint would it be correct to remove this reddish finish?
So then you could bring out the wood grain, which i think is birch.
Is this reddish coating/finish correct WWll for Savage rifles and should i leave it alone?
Phil.

Information

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[Thunderbox]

NIW Savage wood in paper wrap (such as butts and forends) are a bright orange-red. Clearly the pale/colourless birch was routinely coated by Savage with this reddish stain - hence it would be "original" to leave it on the rifle. I don't know if the stain was water-based, but well-used Savages invariably have lost the red colour and have reverted to a sort of dirty brown birch colour.

[Peter Laidler]

That's correct. The reddish stain was a wood preservative they used and was prevalent on some but not all Savages. When a pile of Savage wood was dunked in the hot linseed oil tank, it would leech out and stain the oil bath too. It was definately a preserver but would soon fade in the light. It was quite distinct and had a bit of a sort of rancid, but not unpleasantly so, off smell.