Like I said, I had never even HEARD of .357 MAX as a caliber, until I read online about Savage having made them...so I plead complete ignorance on
THAT one. It must have been produced (at least in part) during the 24V years, when the guns still had wood furniture and were relatively lighter compared to the synthetics which came later. (I know this only because I was able to find a few pics of them online...see the link below for one of them).
Sadly the barrels were separated, something I'm not nuts about
in this model gun. I don't know what year they ceased to make the wood guns because the latest catalog year I have is 1980, when they were obviously still wood-stocked.
Only 4 combinations were ever offered in the fully-seemed barrel years:
.22lr/.410 (Stevens, 1938 or 1939, (Savage after 1949) - through at least 1980)
.22lr/20ga (Savage 1950's - through at least 1980)
.22wmr/.410 (Savage 1950's - through at least 1980)
.22 wmr/20ga (Savage 1950's - through at least 1980)
I am fairly certain the
1950 model year was the first one in which it was re-branded "Savage 24" instead of "Stevens .22/.410."
In the separated barrel years, where they still sported the old wood platform they offered the above, as well as:
.222rem /20ga (1966 - through at least 1980) ** From 1966-1970/71,
other caliber combos still had fully seemed barrels...only model "24V," specifically, had separated barrels
30-30/20ga (1972 - through at least 1980)
.357 Mag/20ga (1979 - through at least 1980)
.357 Max/20ga (??)
.223 rem/20ga (1979 - through at least 1980)
.22 hornet/20ga (1980 - ?)
My source for the above years is old Savage catalogs I have Cornell Pubs reprints of. The earliest ones going back to the 1950's I don't know the
exact years, as I don't have every catalog from those years. And while I remarked "through at least 1980" because that's all the catalogs I have, it's well known that the .22lr and .22wmr combinations were made well into the 90's, if not the early 2000's.
To my knowledge, all other combinations came in later years when all 24's were the newer black (24F) or camo (24T) synthetic...although please correct me if someone knows better.
Here's a .357 Max gun the Google machine found for me -->
http://www.gunauction.com/search/displayitem.cfm?itemnum=9298955
- Nudge