E-mail from Remington

[Gilmore]

Hello all, I had a debate going with a friend about what appears now to be a typo in the April `02 issue of American Rifleman. It stated that the Scatt. Tech. 870 they did a write up on had an alloy receiver which i have to say had me thinking they had switched to alluminum too. So i wrote Remington about this and below is their comforting reply, i thought i would share incase anyone else has the same sort of friends i have. :p



Dear Mr. Gilmore,

Thank you for your inquiry, and welcome to Remington Country! The
Model 870 receiver, as well as all of our shotgun receivers, is machined
from a single block of American steel. The receiver starts out weighing
7.5 pounds, and is machined down to about 2 pounds.

[mete]

They may use steel but sadly the quality of Remingtons has gone way down in the last 10 years.

[huntsman]

I wonder how they make a profit throwing away 5.5lbs of steel.

[Kharn]

Huntsman:
I'd assume they sell it back to the foundry as scrap, to be remelted and reused. Or, they just forget about it. Steel is cheap compared to the cost of the CNC operator's health insurance...

Kharn

[Gilmore]

"They may use steel but sadly the quality of Remingtons has gone way down in the last 10 years".


I`m happy to report that i havn`t experienced this with the two 870s i purchased in the past two years. No quality difference between these and the 870 i picked up in `87.

[Fuzzy]

I'm also happy to report that I've had absolutly no problems with my 2 year old 870. If other people are having problems, I'd be interested to hear about it. I take care of mine and it takes care of me.

And as for milling a 7.5 pound block down to 2 pounds, I think that's pretty common in manufacturing. At the machine shops where I work, it looks like they make more scrap than they do parts. They just sweep it all up and sell it. Somebody else melts it down and sells it back to us. It's a pretty common practice.

[huntsman]

the process of machining down from a block is an old one even with the CNC use. Most other gun makers have gone to a casting or forgings to start with. In some ways I think it's good Remington still does it that way, but what does an 870 express cost ? $220.00 or so , I just wonder how they can sell at that price. With more manufacturing leaving this country all the time I hope big green doesn't go belly up, the loss would be to great to the firearms business.

[zahc]

I emailed them in july and still haven't gotten a reply.