could those of you that have experience with Winchester M70's please school me on the Model 70, specifically the M70's that were produced after the 80's til the present?
A bit of background:
In 1963, Winchester decided to stop making the controlled-round-feed rifles because it was too expensive to manufacture and sell for a price competitive with the Remington 721/722. The Remington folks were eating their lunch, so to speak. So the brilliant minds at the big red W decided to replace the well-regarded CRF Model 70 with a push-feed version starting with the 1964 model year.
FWIW, also in 1964, Remington updated the 721/722 (pretty plain-jane really), replacing it with a cute, well-dressed little number called the Remington Model 700.
So Winchester left much of the tooling and equipment already in place alone and modified an expensive part of making the action, machining the bolt for the claw extractor and blade ejector. In its place, they put a clip-type extractor and a plunger ejector. People were unimpressed. They wanted the old action back and were not buying. Winchester started dressing up the Model 70 to compete with the new, glossier, dressier Remington Model 700. People were still unimpressed, but bought a few more. Stamped sheetmetal followers replaced the machined follower, cast floorplate replaced the machined floorplate. By the early 1970s, Winchester had effectively copied the Remington product, but with a 50-year-old design.
By the end of the 1980s, the folks in New Haven (USRAC by then) started getting the hint (only took them 25 years), and produced a special run of "pre-'64" actions, calling them the Classic. It was absolutely well-received. People raved. But more importantly, people bought. USRAC decided to make it a standard production item, produced side by side with the new crop of push-feed rifles, and the "controlled push feed" action called the Model 70 Shadow/Coyote (depending on accroutements). Fast forward to 2000, the New Haven plant closes, Model 70 prices skyrocket. Old fogies are crying, young yuppies are bewildered, and gun writers called it the end of an era. The world exploded in flames (not really, just kidding). FNH, who owns the Winchester firearms trademark, moves Model 70 production to SC with shipping beginning in 2008-ish. Of course, they decided to make the CRF version, since they had been producing it all along for the FN PBR.
So now we have the CRF Model 70 back. Whew! I am so glad. (So what, big deal) Are they "as good as" the pre-64s? Well, in 1935 the Model 70 got a lot of attention in manufacturing, and was pretty good. But by 1963, the pre-64s were pretty bad, so I hope these are better. And the 1964-1970-ish guns were also pretty bad (stamped checkering, sprayed-on finish, rough metal finishing, so-so accuracy, lousy wood, etc), but they gradually got better, and by 1980 they were pretty dressy (nice wood, cut checkering, good barrels, high-gloss metal finish, etc) but still a push-feed Model 70.
The Rifleman's Rifle they call them
Yeah, yeah, Winchester called them that. Marketing slop.
The Winchester Model 70 was never a
great rifle, it was a good rifle for a good price, developed from the Model 54, which was developed to outsell the Mauser 98 rifles being imported from Germany and Belgium. Being imported, Mausers were kind of pricey, and the Model 54 was less expensive, so it sold well. But the Model 54 was limited to 30-'06-length cartridges. The Model 70 was developed to allow use of full-length magnums without having to resort to a magnum Mauser, which was one of the few commercially available rifles that could handle the new screamers like the 300 H&H. They moved the bolt stop and lengthened the magazine but used the same receiver (cheaper, you know). It was a pretty plain package, but super-reliable, like the Mauser it was paterned after. But I digress.
Anyway, long-winded, maybe a bit inaccurate, but that's basically the story.
