TINCANBANDIT's Gunsmithing: Featured Gun: Savage/Springfield model 745B

The story of the Springfield model 745B shotgun begins with a man that many gun stories start with: John Moses Browning.

I won't get into Browning's whole history but suffice to say he is perhaps the most famous gun designer in all of history.

By the late 1800s things were changing rapidly in the gun industry. A new gun powder, known as smokeless powder, was invented in more or less in the 1880s, it is hard to say who should get credit as several people including Hiram Maxim and Alfred Nobel had patents on different formulations.

Smokeless powder as its name implies, produces less smoke, but that is not the whole story. The new powder also produces power in a different fashion, instead of being an explosive like black powder, smokeless powder was a propellant. Smokeless powder produced around 3 times as much power (and pressure) with less material. It also didn't attract moisture and it didn't foul the guns. This last part is important to our story.

The fouling created by black powder made it impossible to use the pressure exiting the barrel to operate the action. The idea for auto loading guns existed before smokeless powder was invented but was not practical for use with black powder due to the aforementioned fouling. That is why semi and fully automatic guns appeared almost immediately after smokeless powder became available.

In 1898 Browning completed a design for a semi-automatic shogun, he called it the "Auto-5" because it was semi-automatic and held five rounds (one in the chamber and four in the magazine). He presented the new gun to Winchester for their review. Winchester's president not only balked at the design, but claimed it was "the ugliest gun he had ever seen".

Despite the negative response Browning knew he had something special, in fact he considered it to be his best design yet. So, in 1900 he secured a patent for the shotgun under the company founded by himself and his brother: Browning Arms. Browning Arms was founded not to produce guns, but rather to design firearms and license those designs to manufacturers.

Browning then took the gun to Remington, but his meeting was cancelled as the president of Remington died of a heart attack before they could meet. Browning next went to Europe and offered the design to Fabrique Nationale in Belgium, a company that he would eventually make a dominant fixture in the firearms business. FN began production in 1905.

1909 catalog drawing of the Auto-5

In the meantime, Remington also got on board with licensing the design as their model 11, which also began production in 1905.

Fast forward to 1930, Savage Arms was now owned by investors, investors who knew nothing about designing firearms. Arthur Savage had sold his interest in the company in 1905 and moved to California where he invented, among other things, the radial tire.

Savage was looking for a semi-auto shotgun and the Browning Auto-5 was a good, reliable gun that was available to manufacture under license. They did just that and in 1930 Savage introduced the model 720.

I suppose we should spend a little time explaining the action of the 720/Auto-5. The gun is recoil operated, which means that under recoil from the fired shot, the action unlocks and the barrel follows the bolts rearward motion for a short distance (allowing pressures to drop) before the bolt extracts and ejects the spent shell. Then the bolt picks up a new shell from the magazine, inserting it into the chamber as the barrel moves forward under pressure from the recoil spring wrapped around the magazine.

Specs: (based on gun I repaired)

Action: Recoil operated Semi-Automatic

Caliber: 12 Gauge

Overall Length: 48"

Barrel Length: 28"

Length of Pull: 14.75"

Weight: 8 lbs

Savage produced the model 720 from 1930 to 1949, during WWII the gun was purchased by the US Army and used in combat, more than 14,000 model 720s were purchased between 1942 and 1945.

Beginning in 1940 Savage made a value priced version of the gun under the Springfield name, called the model 745. These guns had an anodized aluminum alloy receiver. I am not sure when Savage decided that their niche would be value priced guns, but you can imagine that during the Great Depression a lower priced gun was more likely to sell and when competing against the likes of Browning and Remington with a nearly identical gun, there is really only one avenue to market the gun.

Dating a Savage model 745 can be difficult, Savage did include a date code on guns, but that started in 1949, the year the 720 & 745 were disco'd.

The gun below, had no visible serial numbers, keep in mind serial numbers were not required on guns made prior to 1968 and many cheaper shotguns and .22 rifles didn't get them.

The 745B below belongs to a friend and needed a cleaning and a small repair