Greetings:
You may have seen a previous thread of mine where i found an old 740 in a pawn shoppe and was going to use it as a donor for a project...
then I got to playing with it.
I stripped it down, cleaned it, and took it to the range. In short order 2 things became apparent: This was not a rack-grade factory 740, and it was working just fine and hadn't been shot too much at all. The inside looks un-worn. There is no throat wear i can see. The rails are fine, and there is no sign of the dreaded receiver wear from the bolt...
It has a recessed target-grade crown and the trigger is the smoothest, nicest single stage trigger I have felt on any remington ever, quite possibly any gun without a modern adjustable. Someone, somewhere, has done a lot of work on this thing in all the ways that matter. Now here is why I am enamored with the rifle: with all these hot-rod things done to the mechanics of it, some real gunsmithing went into this rifle and it proves in the shooting. Contrasting that: this rifle is beat to hell cosmetically. - the bluing on this is shot and the receiver has some legit little dings in it.
This rifle has a 5 digit serial number (55xxx) and the rocker-bar ejector, so it is definitely one of the first made. The wood matches the standard 740a.
(hang on, I'm gonna get boring for a sec, but please read it's worth it)
So I go online to find remington production codes, and then I get really confused. On the left side of the barrel it has "+K P" and then a "42" which, if i am reading the decoding diagrams right, means the K is the month and the P is the year. 'Cept no 740s were made in 1967... sooo, it can't be a 740 barrel because that had a different barrel extension thread, unless the bolt was also replaced (???) and then they would have had to machine the rocker-extractor groove into it instead of just letting the more modern plunger extractor do it's job (in which case, the person was insane- if you're building a parts gun there's no need to do that)
If it helps the other side of the barrel has a "J" inside a triangle and a couple other glyphic marks
I can't be sure but my best guess is this rifle was owned by someone who really valued performance and accuracy but didn't shoot it much and carried it in a pickup behind the seat for his whole life. Not certain. Thoughts?
You may have seen a previous thread of mine where i found an old 740 in a pawn shoppe and was going to use it as a donor for a project...
then I got to playing with it.
I stripped it down, cleaned it, and took it to the range. In short order 2 things became apparent: This was not a rack-grade factory 740, and it was working just fine and hadn't been shot too much at all. The inside looks un-worn. There is no throat wear i can see. The rails are fine, and there is no sign of the dreaded receiver wear from the bolt...
It has a recessed target-grade crown and the trigger is the smoothest, nicest single stage trigger I have felt on any remington ever, quite possibly any gun without a modern adjustable. Someone, somewhere, has done a lot of work on this thing in all the ways that matter. Now here is why I am enamored with the rifle: with all these hot-rod things done to the mechanics of it, some real gunsmithing went into this rifle and it proves in the shooting. Contrasting that: this rifle is beat to hell cosmetically. - the bluing on this is shot and the receiver has some legit little dings in it.
This rifle has a 5 digit serial number (55xxx) and the rocker-bar ejector, so it is definitely one of the first made. The wood matches the standard 740a.
(hang on, I'm gonna get boring for a sec, but please read it's worth it)
So I go online to find remington production codes, and then I get really confused. On the left side of the barrel it has "+K P" and then a "42" which, if i am reading the decoding diagrams right, means the K is the month and the P is the year. 'Cept no 740s were made in 1967... sooo, it can't be a 740 barrel because that had a different barrel extension thread, unless the bolt was also replaced (???) and then they would have had to machine the rocker-extractor groove into it instead of just letting the more modern plunger extractor do it's job (in which case, the person was insane- if you're building a parts gun there's no need to do that)
If it helps the other side of the barrel has a "J" inside a triangle and a couple other glyphic marks
I can't be sure but my best guess is this rifle was owned by someone who really valued performance and accuracy but didn't shoot it much and carried it in a pickup behind the seat for his whole life. Not certain. Thoughts?
