stagpanther
New member
Of all the firearms I've ever purchased and looked so much forward to--my winchester model 70 is the biggest heartbreaker of them all. I dreamed of having one for a long time and honestly never looked forward to getting a rifle as much as this one. I had worked on an old win 70 that was chambered in 270 weatherby magnum and I shot a one hole group at 200 yards with it using partitions when zeroing it--then and there I decided I had to have one. Winchester doesn't make them anymore, and ones on the auction blocks didn't look very good to me. So I ordered one in 270 wsm which I thought would be just as good.
My rifle was made entirely in FN's factory in Portugal (where the stocks were originally made) so I thought it would be higher quality than Winchester's normal "farm-out" at the time. Unfortunately, the bore showed signs of obvious damage from the rifling process--a spiral gouge cutting through both lands and grooves spiraled down about 5 inches of the bore near the muzzle end--and the MOA trigger rated adjustable down to 3 lbs I could never get to break any lighter than 4.25 lbs. Although that is a good setting for hunting--I wanted the ability to go lighter for load development. I just installed a Timney which supposedly gets the pull weight down to 1.5 lbs, but under 2 lbs it locks up.
My big mistake--and I guess I have myself to blame for it--is that I did not immediately return it without taking a shot through it. So I went the route of firing lapping with Tubb's bullets and while that did polish out some of the obvious damage, I generally get groups in the 1 to 1.5 MOA range. I know that's perfectly reasonable for any hunting rifle--it's only because I've shot other older ones that grouped much better that I'm disappointed.
My rifle was made entirely in FN's factory in Portugal (where the stocks were originally made) so I thought it would be higher quality than Winchester's normal "farm-out" at the time. Unfortunately, the bore showed signs of obvious damage from the rifling process--a spiral gouge cutting through both lands and grooves spiraled down about 5 inches of the bore near the muzzle end--and the MOA trigger rated adjustable down to 3 lbs I could never get to break any lighter than 4.25 lbs. Although that is a good setting for hunting--I wanted the ability to go lighter for load development. I just installed a Timney which supposedly gets the pull weight down to 1.5 lbs, but under 2 lbs it locks up.
My big mistake--and I guess I have myself to blame for it--is that I did not immediately return it without taking a shot through it. So I went the route of firing lapping with Tubb's bullets and while that did polish out some of the obvious damage, I generally get groups in the 1 to 1.5 MOA range. I know that's perfectly reasonable for any hunting rifle--it's only because I've shot other older ones that grouped much better that I'm disappointed.