Post-64 Model 70

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dak0ta

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Hi,

How are the post-64 Model 70s as a standalone push feed action. Are they designed and built better than an equivalent Rem 700, Browning A-bolt, Savage 110, Vanguard/Howa 1500 of the era?
 
No. Those are all good solid actions listed above with which many animals have been successfully hunted and many precision rifles built. Few would describe the thousands and thousands of solid, reliable Savage 110 rifles as gorgeous. The Model 700 has had its issues. The Howa/Weatherby tends to be somewhat heavy for caliber. I don’t know what to critique about the A-Bolt... But they have all been good, solid rifles in the same league as the post 64 M70 as contemporary. That’s not to say values are the same.

The pre-64 Model 70s, in addition to being control feed rifles were better finished than those made through the end of Winchester’s days in New Haven. Generally, had nicer wood, were nicer rifles. They had class, cache, and feel.

I believe the current FN made Model 70s are once again CFR and while I have seen them very highly reviewed, my limited experience with them would lead me to say that while quality and precision may exceed pre64 levels, feel and finish do not.
 
So basically, opt for the other brands over a post-64 M70.

Ok, I was actually looking at the Sako 75 and Weatherby Mark V rifles, but then my eye was caught by the FN-made Model 70s. It sounds like they lack the soul of the pre-64s.
 
My sample of 1, a blind mag Walmart special purchased used is actually my most accurate rifle. Trigger was better than my 700 and user adjustable. Action was smoother too. Just a few data points for reference, I wouldn’t scoff at a Sako or Howa but then purpose dictates my choices and I’m a king of cheap rifles so those things matter more to me at this point than finish or a perfect fit. Luckily that 70 does well in that department (for me).
 
So basically, opt for the other brands over a post-64 M70.

Ok, I was actually looking at the Sako 75 and Weatherby Mark V rifles, but then my eye was caught by the FN-made Model 70s. It sounds like they lack the soul of the pre-64s.

Not necessarily. The FN made M70s seem great, but both th Sako and Weatherby Mark V are great. The one you like the most is the one you deserve :thumbup:
 
I happen to have had representatives of all of those actions, or at least variations of them.
Just spun a Ruger 77 barrel onto a pushfeed 70 for my FIL. Did some other small work while I was at it.

Personally I'd be hard pressed to really come up with anything to hate about any of them.
I like certain features about each better than the others, but if I had to borrow any of them to hunt with, I'd be happy.
 
The few push feed Model 70s I have come across have all felt very good mechanically and shot well.

They were still a good rifle for their time and ranked right up with their contemporaries, namely the Remington 700. The bad blood of the 64 switch was just never recovered from.

Many forget, the Remington 700 and Savage 110 type rifles were designed to be budget rifles of their day. Winchester was just trying to compete with their pony product that was rapidly becoming to costly to manufacture and was failing to compete.
 
Some of the push feed Model 70 rifles are really good looking rifles and it all depends on the individual rifle. The three position safety of the Model 70 makes them very desirable for me and if I came upon a push feed that was a quality rifle it would be a good rifle to consider. Another point to remember is that the Model 70 has a flat bottom receiver with a internal recoil lug which makes them very strong and they don't have some of the bedding problems of the round bottom actions. With a flat bottom action the recoil lug can be bedded for additional stability. The use of pillar bedding was not needed on the flat bottom actions but it became popular with the round bottom actions like the Remington 700. The value of a rifle is all about the condition of the metal.
 
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Winchester quality has been all over the place. After WW-2 quality started to decline, especially in the late 1950's and 60's. The pre-64's made after the war were nothing special. Remington introduced the 721, and 722, in the mid 1940's which was truly a budget gun, but which was proving to out shoot the much more expensive model 70. These eventually morphed into the 725 and 700 rifles Mechanically the 700 is basically the same rifle, but was better finished and sold much cheaper than the Winchester.

The 700 action truly cuts more corners and is a cheaper built rifle all around than just about any rifle ever made. Most of todays budget guns are a better design that correct the 700's shortcomings. The action is essentially a round pipe threaded on one end for the barrel. The recoil lug is a washer. The extractor is stamped from sheet metal, the bolt handles are brazed onto the bolt, and the trigger used from 1946-2007 is a flawed design. All of those issues are known to fail. The other brands you mention were closer in design to the post 64 Winchester than Remington.

Winchester was losing sales and had no option other than to find a way to produce a cheaper rifle. From a design standpoint the post 64 Winchester design was superior to Remington. But the model 70's made during the 1960's and 1970's were poorly executed. Quality was down and aesthetics lacking. I wouldn't want a 1960's or 70's Winchester. Even a pre-64 Winchester made in the late 50's or early 60's.

Winchester was sold to a group of investors in the late 1970's. They still used the Winchester name, but the official name of the company was United States Repeating Arms Company (USRAC). They really upgraded everything and Winchesters made from about 1980 were very good quality rifles that were superior to Remington.

By 1992 technology made it possible to produce the older style CRF rifle at a reasonable cost and Winchester brought it back. They continued to make push feed actions which they only used in their budget guns after 1992. They rifles were as good as ever, but had cheaper wood or plastic stocks and may not have been as well finished. The top end Winchesters were a faithful copy of the pre-64 design and called "Winchester Classics". The Classics made from 1992 until about 2000 are probably the best Winchesters made. I'd rate them a better rifle than any pre-64.

But by about 2000 quality again started slipping. By the time Winchester closed the New Haven factory in 2006 buying any Winchester was a gamble. Some were still fine, some had issues. I think this was even more true of the budget guns built on the push feed actions.

There were no Winchesters made for almost 2 years and only a few sold in 2008 after FN moved production to South Carolina. The FN produced 70's have some minor design changes from the pre-64. They use a more modern enclosed trigger which is easier to adjust for a good trigger pull, but it isn't as rugged and reliable as the older design. I own one, and have handled some of the SC made guns and can find no real fault. I prefer the older trigger, but the new one has given me no reason to complain.

FN's factory in SC is geared toward producing military weapons and they didn't really have the floor space to make the Winchesters there. FN eventually moved production of the model 70's to their Belgium factory. It bothers some that they are no longer USA made, but by all accounts they are as good as ever.
 
The first centerfire rifle I ever purchased is a late 80's push feed Model 70. I hardly shoot it anymore simply because it's right handed, but it has accounted for quite a few deer. It still feels smoother and more refined than most of my other rifles.
 
I've never been a fan of post-64 M-70's. But to be fair I must add that this push-feed, varmint weight M-70 in .225 Win is among the most accurate out-of-the-box rifles I've ever owned. And for the record, Winchester's .225 Win ammo from the same era is some of the most accurate factory loads I've ever tested. DSC_0138.JPG DSC_0135.JPG DSC_0176.JPG
 
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After WW-2 quality started to decline, especially in the late 1950's and 60's. The pre-64's made after the war were nothing special.

This is a really dumb statement. The finest production rifles made in the United States from 1937 through 1963 were the Winchester Model 70. This applies to workmanship, desirability, quality and accuracy. If you're going to pose as a Model 70 expert you need to limit your comments to something you know something about.
 
My understanding is that Bill Ruger/Sullivan's Model 77 was to economically fill a void left by the pre-64 M70. Why did they initially go with a push-feed rifle, then switch to CRF in the Mark 2 models rather than just do CRF first?
 
This is a really dumb statement. The finest production rifles made in the United States from 1937 through 1963 were the Winchester Model 70. This applies to workmanship, desirability, quality and accuracy. If you're going to pose as a Model 70 expert you need to limit your comments to something you know something about.

There is a bit of lore that by the mid 1950s, the Winchester machinery and tooling was becoming very worn and out of spec and as such was turning out rifle parts that were barely making grade and QC was starting to increase product costs. Not to mention, more items were reaching customers having gotten past QC while still being out of spec.

More of that lore is that this was more of the compelling reason behind the redesign of rifles like the Model 70 and the declining attention to detail and overall cheapening of all products but most famously the Models 70 and 94.

Conventional wisdom has it that early post-64 examples are much better rifles than late pre-64.

This does not account for early post-war production though which I have always heard were prime examples.

Even though my use of the word “lore” is probably not, strictly speaking, correct, it nonetheless appropriate enough to describe conventional wisdom that may or may not be entirely correct.
 
My pops had (mine now) a new '51 mod 70 in 30-06.
The barrel channel was uneven, the checkering was meh, the rifle sights were clocked a bit to the left (just enough to notice if you really looked), the wood was a bit proud of the metal (but the buttpad fit was perfect).
The barrel was awesome and if I'm in good form, it'll do a good 2 inches at 100.

Either dad or me fixed the problems over the last 70 years.
 
There is a bit of lore that by the mid 1950s, the Winchester machinery and tooling was becoming very worn and out of spec and as such was turning out rifle parts that were barely making grade and QC was starting to increase product costs. Not to mention, more items were reaching customers having gotten past QC while still being out of spec.

I have rifle made during the 1950's and early 1960's production periods and there is very little difference in the metal work through the entire period. Metal measurements in thousands of an inch in the essential parts were so tight that it rivals anything that is done today. Bottom metal, fine parts and stocks can easily be switched from rifle to rifle with excellent fit. Even barrels can be switched with small work by a gunsmith. Where Winchester quality fell off in the late 1950's and early 1960's was in the quality of walnut wood in the stocks and the shaping and finish of the stocks. Winchester's supply of good walnut wood from Missouri was becoming scarce and this caused many rifles to be sent out with inferior quality wood. In the later period hand checkering had been replace by machine checkering on the standard grade rifles and this was crude compared to the earlier rifles.
 
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My friends grandfather has a pre-64 70 that he bought new. It's a standard grade gun, and has been beaten on pretty good, but held up ok. It had some issues, which is why I ended up working on it, some of which I'm sure came from the factory and I couldn't do anything about, but over all it worked, and even with a sewer pipe barrel shot fine.
 
I've never been a fan of post-64 M-70's. But to be fair I must add that this push-feed, varmint weight M-70 in .225 Win is among the most accurate out-of-the-box rifles I've ever owned. And for the record, Winchester's .225 Win ammo from the same era is some of the most accurate factory loads I've ever tested. View attachment 944291 View attachment 944292 View attachment 944293


That's one heck of a piece of glass. Not sure I've seen one like that before. Not to get too off topic, but would you care to give us some insight? Maybe in a new thread?
 
That's one heck of a piece of glass. Not sure I've seen one like that before. Not to get too off topic, but would you care to give us some insight? Maybe in a new thread?
The scope is a Bausch & Lomb 6-24X variable made in the US by B&L back in the 50's-60's. It was, and is, one of the all-time best target/varmint scopes and incorporated several ground breaking mechanical and optical features. It was also expensive to make, which was reflected by the price tag, and why you seldom see them.
 
I've owned Winchester model 70s from the 1970s to 2012. I have never had a bad one even in push feed. There are only 2 makes of bolt action rifles in my safe, Winchester and Remington. I've liked every one of them. I tried Savage and just found annoying things wrong so sold them.

My most accurate is a Winchester 70 Stealth I in .308 Win purchased when it was announced NH would be closed. I was warned that it was a crap shoot if the rifle would be good. No, that rifle never disappointed me, not even once. It's sitting in the safe now and I won't part with it.

Also have a FW Stainless from 2012. This is a sweet rifle too, it's staying.

If there is any problem with the rifles from 70's and 80s it has always been that any with a wooden stock needed bedding work. I can say the same for Remington.
 
Picture on the left is Hathcock post war, post active duty with a Remington in a fiberglass stock. Picture on the right is not Mr. Hathcock.

The other marine is Lance Corporal Gunderson. The reason the enemy couldn't kill Hathcock was because he kept looking like someone else. The picture shows a heavy barrel Winchester Model 70 sniper rifle with a Unertl scope of the type used by Carlos Hatcock in Vietnam. The picture was of interest because of the scope shown by Offhand. The report on Carlos Hathcock said he preferred the Model 70 over the other rifles that were available in Vietnam. The marine snipers had gone through sniper training with the Model 70 and they took them to Vietnam, and the Marine Corps purchased more Model 70's as they were needed.
 
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I'll admit, without any pretext, that I am a fan of the Winchester M70. However, I was always biased AGAINST the push feed models until I bought this M70 Lightweight Carbine made in the mid eighties. This thing flat out shoots with the 180 grain blue box Federal ammo. I'm not sure why it doesn't like the 150's or 165's...I was hoping it did. While it didn't do at all poorly with them, it was sub MOA with the 180. It WILL let you know that it's there when you light one up, but it is consistently one of the best shooting m70's I have, and I have a few that shoot really well. It goes without saying that it has changed my position on the CRF vs Push feed debate forever. Even though I know that debate wasn't about accuracy, this rifle certainly has my attention. And, because it was a push-feed, I got it at a really good price.
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I'll admit, without any pretext, that I am a fan of the Winchester M70. However, I was always biased AGAINST the push feed models until I bought this M70 Lightweight Carbine made in the mid eighties. This thing flat out shoots with the 180 grain blue box Federal ammo. I'm not sure why it doesn't like the 150's or 165's...I was hoping it did. While it didn't do at all poorly with them, it was sub MOA with the 180. It WILL let you know that it's there when you light one up, but it is consistently one of the best shooting m70's I have, and I have a few that shoot really well. It goes without saying that it has changed my position on the CRF vs Push feed debate forever. Even though I know that debate wasn't about accuracy, this rifle certainly has my attention. And, because it was a push-feed, I got it at a really good price.
View attachment 944804


Beautiful rifle.
 
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