Gunny, last pic is interesting.  see the 3 grooves?  tells me something substantial was caught there for a while.

According to OF's and mine study for a better oil filter, dirt of varying sizes gets thru the filter, just less as it gets bigger.  The oil studies say that anything bigger then 10 microns is too big for the oil to protect against. Now it maybe that the grooves were caused by chunks of material that were ground away, so can't say the filter was at fault.  But it's interesting just the same.

Well guys pulled it apart today. The teflon tape worked great and it came apart without much trouble.( Thanks Verslagen ! ) The parts that squeezed out on the sides I was able to shave off with a pocket knife which worries me about the cure so I have it under a heat lamp right now. I'll test the strength in the morning to see how hard it is. It does appear though that JB weld shrinks a little as it hardens because I can still feel the three grooves slightly when I run my fingernail across it. That or the teflon tape pushed down into the grooves. I'm afraid that will make plastigaging it impossible on the bearing with the grooves but I'll check the one next to it and see how it came out.
One question though is, will the grooves cause the oil barrier to fail again? (gonna try it anyway, can't afford a new head and cover right now.)

Not knowing how the JB weld would tolerate the grease while curing is why I'd rather use the virtually inert teflon tape.  And it's pretty thin.  Have we ever established how much clearance we need?

Nope.  Nor do we really know how much oil clearance there is on a stock Savage engine.

Until the plastigage gets put in place and tightened down, we won't really know very much about oil clearance as a subject.   We just know what car engine guys know.

Follow up on the teflon tape idea -- brass bearing shim stock comes in down to .0015" and .002" thicknesses.  The stuff is about like aluminum foil in feel but it is tougher as the base metal is tougher.

If your head bearings were eat up enough to have the clearance to include both the brass shim stock and the JB Weld behind it, then the JB Weld would be plenty "squeezy" stiff enough to enforce the .002" thick shim stock into perfect conformance to the greased up cam surface.

That way you could get the assurance about being able to take it apart and you would get a durable skin to your new bearing surface AND you would get "approaching zero" oil gap clearance.

Downside would be that if you did have to sand it some, it would be tough to remove any material as brass shim doesn't abrade nearly as easy as JB Weld does.  Plus there isn't much there to abrade away.

Upside is that once the job was done, the surface provided would be a durability upper compared to the original aluminum.

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If I was intentionally reaming for some clearance to do such a thing, I'd get .005" or therabouts brass shim stock so as to have some meat to sand on.  And I'd ream to leave a thou or two of JB Weld paste in place behind the shim material.

Well the plastigage looked good on the undamaged bearings which at least is one good sign. The repaired side is sitting right at the wear limit but I'm going to see what i can get out of it and see what happens to the repair. What oil would you recommend I run to help with the existing condition? I'm good with cars and general mechanics but this is my first Motorcycle (don't even have a license yet). I'd like to make this last as long as possible. I figure if I'm gonna have a spill learning, might as well do it on something that's paid off. ( I hate new things anyway, tinkering is half the fun of ownership )

I honestly don't know what would have done it. I bought the bike from my neighbors kid after it had been sitting for about 6 months and just started tearing it apart. Didn't even try to start it because of the oil leaks.
The damaged bearings are the closest ones to the gear so it has the most load on it. As far as the teflon and the clearance I would blame the shrinkage of the JB weld before the teflon tape.
If I had it to do over again I would not torque the bolts all the way down and then wet sand with some fine paper till the journal is within specs. If I had just run the bolts down enough to align and put slight pressure it wouldn't have pushed so much of the JB out and I would have the opportunity to work it. If it rips out again because of the oil clearance I'll probably try that.

Justin, JB Weld is chock full of fine metal powder, that's why it it a thick dark paste.

Gunner did great -- he put us a whole lot closer to a final cheap solution.

The discussion on the teflon tape was good -- it lead to the brass shim stock forced into zero conformance with JB Weld behind it pushing on it.

That is the one my money is behind now -- durable bearing surface material, approaching a zero run clearance, still no machining (maybe a little sanding).

Our thanks to MMRanch and Cheif Gunner for developing the trick so far.  Give us another try or two and we'll have our bible on how to rig up a torn up head.