Help with Savage No4mk1* with 0C0### serial

[Alan de Enfield]

Hi all!

I am curious about the lineage of this rifle.
I looked up serial numbers and couldn’t find any mk1*’s with serial 0C0###. Is this an odd one? Or not that rate.

Thanks in advance!

Jon

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That certainly appears to be an oddity, normally you won't find any Mk1* in the low serial numbers because the 1st (approximatley) 120,000 rifle Savage produced were No4 Mk1 (without the alteration to the bolt release system) Savage wanted to simplify the manufacture so applied for a derogation to allow them to deviate from the specification.
Despite the fact that this change could result in rifles getting damaged and not loading correctly the permission was granted. Britain never changed over to this 'lower standard' and we kept our manufacturers supplying to the specifications.

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[jonh172]

That certainly appears to be an oddity, normally you won't find any Mk1* in the low serial numbers because the 1st (approximatley) 120,000 rifle Savage produced were No4 Mk1 (without the alteration to the bolt release system) Savage wanted to simplify the manufacture so applied for a derogation to allow them to deviate from the specification.
Despite the fact that this change could result in rifles getting damaged and not loading correctly the permission was granted. Britain never changed over to this 'lower standard' and we kept our manufacturers supplying to the specifications.

Thanks Alan!

From what little research I did I could not seem to find any logs of Mk1* with 0 after the C, they seemed to all have a number other than 0 so I found this one odd.

I’m wondering if it’s worth restoring??

---------- Post added at 09:44 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:41 AM ----------

My memory is dim, but this rifle has five digits after the C which suggests to me that it isn't an early rifle at all, but a late one. I'm no expert on Savage serials but wasn't it the case that towards the end of production (when they got to a million???) they started again at 0C but with an extra digit to the right of the C in the serial number.............?

I think you are correct Roger in that it is a late war produced mk1* and they started over at 0C but the 0 after the C is what’s puzzling.
I may be way off here and it’s perfectly normal, but I couldn’t seem to find any proof the numbers after the C started at 0.
Please let me know your thoughts on this!