Savage Model 1907 Advice Needed

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blackgang said:
The 1907 doesn't have a hammer, you mean the cocking piece.
Given that a previous owner(s) have messed with the gun based on the replacement grips and removal of the factory finish, there is no telling if the internal pieces are correct. You may want to write this off to educational tuition and keep it as a wall hanger. Or if that doesn''t work for you, a good gunsmith MAY be able to help. Good luck with this.
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Yes I am aware it doesn't actually have a hammer, but "cocking piece follow" doesn't sound as good. :rofl:
 
jmace57 said:
If the slide is stamped 7.65...and I can see a hole for the lanyard, it looks like you DO have one of the French contract models.
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Well thats the strange thing. The slide says Cal. 32, but the receiver has the lanyard hole. I'm guessing this gun is pieced together from two pistols.
 
Well I am going to begin tearing down this gun and giving it a rebluing, along with new correct grips, and hopefully repair the sear issue all at the same time. I will probably begin the teardown tonight, and will try to document the process as it motivates me to do a better job.

I'm going to attempt to repair the sear first. I'm not having much luck finding a new one, and even then, it will have to be fit to the gun by a gunsmith. I might as well try to repair the one I have already.

Grips and bluing chemicals are on their way according to my latest Midway USA email.
 
If the gripframe is indeed hardchrome, nothing you have at home will remove it. Did you try a dab of cold blue, to see if it will actually mark?
Maybe put some new grips on it, and get the sear fixed. These pistols were an anomaly in so many ways; striker fired with a visible 'hammer', double stack magazine, and how do you like the slide rails milled at an angle? Somebody in the shop was showing off! ;)
If I were a betting man, between the hardchrome lower, grip panels, and the trigger troubles, it sounds like a bubbasmith has been at work. The trigger on mine is hernia-inducing; one reason I don't shoot it more, so BillyJoBob may have tried to lighten it.
There's a guy who goes to gun shows (remember those....?) who sells magazines; have to look in the Rolodex (remember those....?) to see if I have a number. But they are hen's teeth.
Check with Numrich and GunPartsInc. as well.
Moon
 
Okay, there's more.
The guys name is Jim Shaffer, 412 672-6830; his business is called the Clip Joint, and he has both magazines and grip panels...no idea if he has what you need, but that is the kind of thing he handles.
Dug out mine; it is 1917 marked, has 98% original finish (with a little thinning on the heel), which is an odd, almost matte blue. I also have two magazines, neither is marked, view windows on the left. Mags will drop free if the release is held in.The trigger isn't as bad as remembered, so perhaps it needs a range run; I reload .32s.
For the OP, good luck; they are a really great pistol.
Moon
 
halfmoonclip said:
If the gripframe is indeed hardchrome, nothing you have at home will remove it. Did you try a dab of cold blue, to see if it will actually mark?
Maybe put some new grips on it, and get the sear fixed. These pistols were an anomaly in so many ways; striker fired with a visible 'hammer', double stack magazine, and how do you like the slide rails milled at an angle? Somebody in the shop was showing off! ;)
If I were a betting man, between the hardchrome lower, grip panels, and the trigger troubles, it sounds like a bubbasmith has been at work. The trigger on mine is hernia-inducing; one reason I don't shoot it more, so BillyJoBob may have tried to lighten it.
There's a guy who goes to gun shows (remember those....?) who sells magazines; have to look in the Rolodex (remember those....?) to see if I have a number. But they are hen's teeth.
Check with Numrich and GunPartsInc. as well.
Moon
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I'm betting it isn't hard chrome, judging by how terrible the finish actually looks. But if it is, there are ways to remove hard chrome similar to electrolysis.

Either way, I will do something with this gun. It's simple enough I should should able to make it a decent shooter.
 
halfmoonclip said:
Okay, there's more.
The guys name is Jim Shaffer, 412 672-6830; his business is called the Clip Joint, and he has both magazines and grip panels...no idea if he has what you need, but that is the kind of thing he handles.
Dug out mine; it is 1917 marked, has 98% original finish (with a little thinning on the heel), which is an odd, almost matte blue. I also have two magazines, neither is marked, view windows on the left. Mags will drop free if the release is held in.The trigger isn't as bad as remembered, so perhaps it needs a range run; I reload .32s.
For the OP, good luck; they are a really great pistol.
Moon
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Thank you for this info
 
Well I lucked out. It definitely wasn't a hard chrome finish as my brass wire wheel took it right off.

I then went ahead and polished the slide, frame, trigger, mag release, and barrel to get a nicer finish for bluing.

I would show pictures but I dont have a photo host other than a different forum I use, and apparently they just got rid of that option.
 
IIRC the trigger bar remains down after shooting because it's caught under a ledge, look over Othias' "C&Rsenal" show on it and you see what I mean inside the shadow box.
The reason I mentioned this is because is the "cocking piece" and attached striker follow down there appears to be as much or more more mass in the hammer than in the striker, to my eyes, and combined the mass may have something to do with your doubling fire. The point is that the disconnector may not be working, which I've never seen happen but that whole area of the guns seems like a weak one mechanically to me.
I believe the striker/cocking piece is well disconnected in a mechanically correct pistol, the sear is separated from the trigger bar by the aforementioned ledge. There is a little spring loaded part on the trigger bar that should stay back when the trigger is released as the gun is out of battery, if it doesn't, and if the striker (etc) are not caught by the sear there may be enough mass to fire the cartridge.
Then again I may have it all wrong too.
I have at least two, a .32 1907 and a 1917 model, and I think maybe a .380 1907 as well.
BTW, HLE publishing has an Ebook that shows in great detail the workings of the Savage, and it gets even better! He offers two FREE ebooks, one of which is the Savage! (https://www.hlebooks.com/) Many other types of handguns are listed and the average ebook is about $7.95 each,( and I have a BUNCH of them). A bad thing has happened to me twice in that when a hard drive fails you may not be able to revive the ebooks, however, Mr. Henriot was kind enough to me at least to credit me 1/2 price for replacements the last time that happened.
Now, the sear itself sits at the front of the bolt, and is very small, if the spring that forces it to lock the front of the striker back was gummed up or broken, or perhaps other possible problems, that might be part of the problem.
 
halfmoonclip said:
No, not hardchrome! :)
BTW, how were your grips attached? The '17s use a screw, but the '07s are supposed to spring into place?
Moon
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The grips slide into a dovetail from the back and then snap into place on the groove you can see in the picture above.

I got the parts blued, although I'm not real happy with how it looked on the frame and slide. It just didn't want to get a deep black to them, and the slide was blotchy, even after steel wool. I put several costs of bluing on until it didn't seem like they were getting any darker, then coated everything in oil to cure overnight.
full.jpg

The new Indian head grips should be delivered tomorrow. The we will see how the bluing looks in the daylight. I ordered new bluing chemicals, so if I don't like the finish, I will sand it off and reblue with new stuff instead of my old stuff.
 
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Well the frame didn't blue very well at all, so had to redo it. Used some new Blue Wonder gun blue, but got distracted while doing it and missed a step. So instead of a deep blue or black, it has a case hardened sheen to it, which I really like anyway. I also bought new grips, but they need fit to the gun, and I'm not in the mood to mess with them right now, so I put the ugly ones that came with it back on.

Also, by rotating the firing pin, the sear has much more purchase and when dropping the slide while dry firing, it has yet to "hammer" follow, and the trigger pull does not seem to be too bad.

Function testing with live ammo will take place later.

I personally think it looks much better. And actually looks like a war worn pistol.
full.jpg
 
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She works! I put one bullet in the magazine, and released the slide, and no hammer follow. Pulled the trigger and it fired. Then loaded the mag and did it again. Still no hammer follow, and fired all 9 rounds with one stovepipe. Then put the last few bullets in the mag, released the slide, and both rounds fired like they should.

I consider this gun fixed.
 
OP:
I also had an old 1907 that would double fire occasionally. It is disturbing, to say the least.

I dismantled the breech bolt and removed the sear. Upon close inspection, I noted that the engagement edge of the sear was slightly rounded off (probably from overuse and/or abuse by some previous home smith).

A few wipes with a very fine diamond file straightened the edge out and absolutely fixed my doubling issue. Its the only time I ever had the nerve to take a file to modify any gun part. I couldn't find a replacement sear at the time and I figured what the heck.
 
Freudianfloyd said:
Thanks. Its far from pro, but much better than it was when I picked it up.
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It looks better than mine. I'm pretty sure at some point this pistol was Parkerized. It's been around for more than a hundred years and I've only had it for 25 so, who knows what all's been done to it?

Savage 1907-2.jpg
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Freudianfloyd said:
New member to this site. I have been a longtime reader and gun owner, but never signed up for some reason.

Anyway, I picked up this Savage 1907 yesterday at a garage sale. I didn't know anything about it, as I am more into newer guns, but thought it was a cool piece so I bought it.

I know some of these guns are more desirable than others, and if I am correct, this gun was one of the French military WW1 examples. Serial number 151xxx.

What I dont understand is the two tone finish. I guess it's possible that the previous owner refinished the bottom half of the gun and left the bluing on the slide, but it doesn't look like any aftermarket finish to me. And if that was the case, why not the whole gun?

Secondly, if it isn't some super rare two tone version, which I know isn't likely, is there any harm at this point in refinishing the entire gun? I am assuming most of the collectibility is already gone if they did actually refinish it.

And last and probably most importantly, this gun has a hammer follow issue, and one that could have been deadly. The first time I went to fire this gun, it went into full auto. Luckily, I had it pointed in a safe direction down range when the slide was released. Is there a known cure for this? I'd really like to shoot this gun, but its a bit scary at this point.

View attachment 998729

Sorry for all the questions in my first post, but due to the history of this pistol, I am intrigued.

Thanks again


Oh, one last thing. I paid $100 for the pistol, a mag, and a box and a half of ammo. How did I do?
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What a find. You stole that pistol at $100
 
Patocazador said:
Keep it and have a full auto illegal pistol. Just joking. I had a Mod. 51 Rem. (my 1st pistol) that I had a gunsmith lighten the trigger. Every now and then it fires of 2 rounds at a time. If it weren't my 1st gun, I would have gotten rid of it.
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Just saw a vid on the Reddit forum of a guy shooting his Savage 1907 full auto

apparently full auto Savages are trend now

10 shots quick
 
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