What is the age of a Stevens Visible Loading repeater serial x154 patented April 30 07?

Answer 1

You can narrow down the dates of production looking at the following information. Information was gleaned from a December, 1986 Amertican Rifleman article by Pete Dickey.

In 1907, the J. Stevens Arms and Tool Co. of Chicopee Falls, Mass., brought out a pump action .22 caliber rifle that was marked on the barrel, "Visible Loading Repeater". It was cataloged as the "Visible Loading No. 70", and was chambered in .22 short/long/long rifle. A .22 short only model, the Model 70 1/2, was also produced. Barrels were round in lengths of 20" or 22"., and the rifles had a straight grip stock.

In 1916 the company name changed to J. Stevens Arms Co. The firm was eventually purchased by Savage Arms Co. in the 1920s.

In the mid 1920's, the rifles catalog name was slightly changed to "Visible Loader" until 1931, when it was replaced with a similar "Visible Loader No. 71, which featured a 24" long octagon barrel and a pistol grip stock.

The last Visible Loader was produced in 1934. About 100,000 were produced over the 26 year production span.

The peculiar feature of the rifles is that the cartridges from the tubular magazine are fed straight up into the twin extractors on the breech face where they are, indeed, readily visible, unlike other pump actions. There is no "ejector" as such. An extracted round is ither pushed up and out of the extrractors by the following round being fed upward from the magazine, or if it is the last round or empty case in the rifle, by manual removal.

These rifles were designed for "regular loadings", thus modern high speed cartridges should not be used in any of these rifles.