Features that made the Savage 340 inexpensive and popular also made the bolts sticky. Here’s a simple fix that markedly improved the bolt manipulation of one Model 340 chambered in .30-30.

by Brian R Smith

The Savage Models 340 and 840, and the Stevens 322 and 325 before them, were value-priced, basic, bolt-action small game hunting rifles in their time. Chambered for then-popular varminting cartridges such as the .22 Hornet, .222 Remington, .225 Winchester, and the venerable deer cartridge, the .30-30 Winchester (.30 WCF), Savage-Stevens turned these compact boltguns out by the tens of thousands, later adding the .223 Remington chambering. There were letter suffixes appended to model numbers to denote changes and different levels of “trim” and features. An examination of the myriad models are outside the scope of this article.

These rifles were popular and long-lived for several reasons: First…

Read more in the November 2019 issue.

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