winchester 70 .30 heavy barrel?

J

jborushko

New member
i have a Winchester 70 chambered for .300 win mag (post 64). i want a heavy/bull barrel but cant seem to find any thing specific.

the question is will any Winchester m70 heavy/bull barrel or barrel blank work if its .30cal? or does it have to be .300winmag specific? the barrel i want would have to be 1-1/4" diameter to fit the stock i have in mind

yes, i do know that a barrel bank would need to be threaded and chamber reamed.

the idea is to mount this is a Choate Ultimate Sniper Rifle Stock and start tuning this in for long range matches
 
great!! it so turns out that we had a .30cal 27" bull barrel for a pre-64 laying in the shop. apparently we pulled it back in the day because of throat wear, and the customer wanted a lighter barrel. i will cut the pre64 threads, re-thread and re-chamber.

somebody had originally re-chambered this barrel from a 30-06 to a 300winmag.

after running a bore scope through it we discovered the rifling still in good shape and after some love it should hold up for a good life of shooting
 
If it was to be my barrel, I'd shorten it to at least 26" from the chamber end prior to rethreading/rechambering, just to be on the safe sife, to ensure eliminating any unseen old throat wash.

.
 
jborushko, where are you in Tacoma? I'm in Puyallup and am working on meeting more local machinists with firearms capabilities.
 
well two years after i made this post i wound up buying a

Douglas XX premium airgauged #9 stainless 30"

shipped to my house at $415-

so we are just gonna turn this blank to fit my m70

476140_10150684418852259_2020770791_o.jpg
 
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Re Douglas barrels, I've had several, chrome-moly, premium air gage installed on rifle actions, both post 64 M 70's and a Remington 40X. Never had a bad on. Found the people at Douglas great to deal with.

Re prices, they have gone up quite a bit, from the figure you mentioned, as memory serves. That's life, the cost of rifles has gone up too.
 
jborushko, I hope you don't have any "holding still" problems with that No. 9 Douglas barrel. It's about 3 pounds heavier than their No. 7 contour which parallels what folks used years ago on 30 caliber magnum barrels for long range prone matches. If you're going to shoot it atop a rest atop a bench, then its fine. Otherwise, I think your rifle's going to be way too heavy to hold an area on paper 1/2 to 3/4 MOA which is what's needed for good scores in long range prone matches.
 
Re what one can do with one weight barrel or another, the following might prove of some interest.

With a post 1964 Model 70 Standard Target Rifle, barrel length was 24", muzzle dia. was around 0.750", give or take a little, it was the factory barrel, the rifle weighed about 10 pounds, and was chambered for 308 Win, rifling twist was 1 in 12, chrome-molly, not stainless...

Shooting prone, with a military sling, and my elbows in the grass, I could regularly hold 10 ring elevation at 600 yards with Redfield Iron Sights. I could not shoot effectively, with a 308 Win. at 1000 yards. With a 30-06, different story.

The Douglas Barrels I had on my rifles, when they were rebarreled, were 24" long, muzzle diameter was about 0.750, straight taper, I suppose equivalent to a # 6 barrel. Rifles so barreled ran 10 plus to perhaps 12 pounds, and handled very nicely.
 
this rifle is for bench shooting, or prone supported off the bipod. this is deffinatly not being built for holding prone or carried shoulder firing. so weight is not a factor to me with this gun. though if i shoot holding prone the weight on the tail end of the stock might help with "holding still" - but like i said its pretty much just a bench gun. The stock is heavy as well. id be surprised if this doesn't tip the scale at 15-20 lbs by the time im done.

the original barrel was a feather weight sporter contour, im not sure of the twist, though i would assume 1:10, but this new barrel is 1:10 for sure

i tore down this origninal hunting rifle because i found hunting with a .300win mag WAY to much for anything i hunt. and due to my antisipating the recoil of the .300wm on such a (orginally) light rifle, my accuracy was severily reduced. basically i shoot my 30-06 about 1000% better when im hunting


so i stick with what im good at when hunting and ill stretch my skills with other guns in a more controlled situation
 
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jborushko:

Re shooting off a bench, I guess that weight is not a consideration, though in bench rest competition, I thought that there were weight limits according to the class of rifle you were shooting in.

Speaking personally, the only thing I ever hunted as long range was the 5 V Target, used at 1000 yards and one match in 1972 as I recall, when they were "expirementing" with a 10 point decimal target for 1000 yards.

I never myself found it necessary to use anything more powerful than the 30-06 for 1000 yard shooting, but thren all I was doing was making a 30 caliber hole in a sheet of paper. As I had mentioned, in National Match Course of long range competition, I felt that a rifle in the range of 10-perhaps 12 pounds was quite comfortable, and with a properly designed stock, would handle recoil quite nicely. Bench Rest shooting, except for load development/testing was not anything I involved myself in.

Good luck with your "new" rifle.

Alan
 
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