There was some discussion on another thread recently about weither or not all 418's had Speedlock. My opinion based on an catalogs of the time were that Speedlock was standard. I was trying out some new Polish .22 Short ammo in  my 418 this evening and realized that I had forgotten that it does not have Speedlock. My .22 Long Rifle 418 and .25 Stevens 418 both have Speedlock. Not sure if my Short has been changed or not. I do know that the triger pull seems to be afuly heavy on that one.

I am thinking they would have to be switched. You sure could not sell something like that today. They were target guns more than hunting guns. The short hammer fall was thought to be more accurate.

       I had one of these rifles with the speedlock back in the late fifties.  The guy who sold it to me showed me how the speedlock worked.  It was certainly no "death wish" arrangement.  It worked fine.  In those days, virtually every manufacturer had their own idea of what a safety should be.  Krags had theirs, '03 Springfields had theirs, Winchester and Marlins had theirs on lever actions, Winchester had a different one one their each of their different bolt rifles, and Savage had the least intuitive one on 99's.  You learned how the one that came on your rifle worked, and that was it.  I would say that over 90% of the riflemen of the day owned only one rifle, so it wasn't hard to learn how to operate it.  Now it's different.  Many people have a different rifle for each job, so remembering which safety works which way is more of a problem.