Savage 720 Disassembly Help?

[Hcompton79]

I know this is not a military surplus gun, however I was hoping that somebody here has some knowledge that they would be able to share as I have been unable to find the answer to my question anywhere.

So I have on my bench a Savage Model 720 autoloading shotgun, a licensed copy of the Browning Auto-5 made from 1930-1949.

I would like to disassemble it in order to clean it and look into fitting replacement recoil springs for the barrel and bolt, however I am having a dickens of a time trying to remove the rear butt stock.

I have disassembled a couple of Browning branded Auto-5s and a Remington model 8 which operates on the same principle and the general procedure I am familiar with is to remove the rear tang screw and its lock screw and then the butt should slide off the bolt spring tube and off the gun. However in this case, after following that procedure, my butt stock will not move.

Now, Looking at this diagram from Numrich, it appears that the Savage version may have a bolt that threads into the back of the stock under the butt plate and into the bolt spring tube:
Savage/Springfield Model 720 Shotgun Parts | Numrich Gun Parts

However, I cannot find any evidence to corroborate this and my gun does not appear to have any bolt visible in the weight relief hole in the back of the stock.

Is anyone who is familiar with this gun able to tell me if there is another stock retaining bolt and how I would go about removing it?

Information

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[rcathey]

On Remington 11s I find it helpful to remove the trigger guard. Sometimes that’s putting enough pressure on a buttstock to hold it on.

I’m not sure about the stock bolt...perhaps there is one in there but it would indeed be strange to me. If it’s there, maybe it’s covered with gunk and that’s why you can’t see it.

[Hcompton79]

Well, I was able to get the butt off. There was no retaining bolt that threaded into the volt return spring tube, but there was an oddly cut relief hole that almost looked like a screw head in the bottom of the relief hole.

The stock was being held on by a small amount of surface rust on the exterior of the spring tube and I was able to get it off with a bit more persuasion and clean up the spring tube with some steel wool and oil.

I was able to learn that while the Savage 720 does not have a stock retaining bolt accessible from the butt, there were some copies made after the browning patents ran out that do use this method of stock retention, and thus the bolt and bolt return spring must come out through the front of the receiver.

[Cosine26]

I am no expert, but evidently the Savage 720 shotgun was used by the US Military and is covered in the TM 9-285 pages 193-233. If you GOOGLE "TM 9-285" or "Savage 720 Shotgun Disassembly" there is a web site that will allow you to download TM 9-285. The Manual is 285 pages long so you might be able to download only the pages that you need.
FWIW
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