While troubleshooting a performance problem, I decided to take my carb apart and look for problems, clean it, etc. The problem turned out not to be in the carburetor at all.

I took a lot of pictures while I was taking it apart, because I thought they might be a handy reference for putting it back together. Just in case anyone else is interested in what the insides of a stock savage carb looks like, here they are:

http://www.thinkythings.org/savage/carb.html

I think I've identified all the parts correctly. If I've goofed anything up too horribly, please let me know.

I'm not certain what part the pison bore is, but I surely did soak down everything I could get to with carb cleaner. For the most part, nothing was very dirty, though.

My problem, I should mention, was with the vacuum hose (#38 in the picture, I think). It had a small hole in it, which was causing stalling when I went from high RPMs to idle. I had replaced it with a piece of brake hose that was the right inner diameter, but then I had a problem where it would cut out while cruising at constant RPM, possibly because the hose walls were thicker and caused a narrowing of the passage at the bends.

I replaced it with a stock hose, and now it runs pretty well. However, replacing that hose was after I tried everything else I could think of, including cleaning the carb.