Category: Gratuitous Gun Pics

I’m often asked, when at a meeting of the local Beer ‘N Treason chapter while we watch a luckless hippie turning gently on a spit:  “Kim, what’s it all about with this ‘Pre-64 Winchester rifle’ thing?  What’s so special about 1964, and why are these rifles so popular?”

At the risk of boring my Readers (who doubtless know all about this stuff), let me explain.

After 1964, the Winchester Repeating Arms Company changed their manufacturing methodology for their bolt-action rifles.  [insert anti-beancounter tirade here]  In the words of Scott Weber:

“Winchester went to stamped checkering on the gun stocks instead of hand checkering. Plastic replaced metal in some components, and a lesser grade of bluing was used on the rifle’s actions and barrels.  None of that changed the basic function and accuracy of the Model 70s, but the downgrades in craftsmanship angered many customers, and Model 70s made after 1964 don’t carry the same value as pre-’64s.”

As I recall, the actions were likewise changed, from forged- to cast steel.  While there is no appreciable change in efficacy, when working the bolt action there is a distinct change in the action’s sound from the pre-64 rifles to their post-64 successors.  The change in sound is likewise noticeable in other rifle generation changes, e.g. the Swiss K11 to the K31:  the cast steel makes a clacking sound, while the forged action rings. (No prizes for guessing which one I prefer.)

Anyway, what brought all this on was this rifle, newly-arrived at Merchant Of Death Steve Barnett:

Now let’s talk a little about the chambering of the above beauty.  The .300 H&H Magnum is often compared to the older (and much more common, certainly in the Mod 70) .30-06 Springfield, but the H&H is actually more powerful.  Frank Barnes gives the following data, using a common 190gr. bullet:

Muzzle velocity (fps)
.30-06 : 2,700
.300 H&H : 3,000

Muzzle energy (ft-lbs)
.30-06 : 3,076
.300 H&H : 3,798

I’ve used the .300 H&H myself back in the day, and its effect on thin-skinned game like warthog and impala is, to put it mildly, impressive.

Where the .30-06 excels, of course, is in the old “Bubba’s Bait & Tackle” test (especially in the U.S.).  If you forgot your ammo at home, any ammo store will have .30-06 on the shelf, probably with a choice of manufacturer.  (Actually, I think it’s against the law in some states not to carry any.) The .300 H&H?  Not so much — in fact, unless there’s a large chain store like Cabela’s in the offing, you can pretty much forget about finding it anywhere.

And the price difference reflects that availability:  .30-06 runs about $1.50 per round, whereas the .300 H&H will set you back $5 (!!!).

Not that this is too important, in hunting terms, because you’re not going to blast off hundreds of rounds, either way.

But if your other rifle is an old M1 Garand…

Note:  this post was supposed to appear yesterday, but Mr. Fumblefingers cocked up the date.  Mea maxima culo.

I haven’t heard of Tactical Solutions (Boise ID) before, but this is kind of an interesting concept (via Collectors):

Everyone’s heard me ranting about the cost of .22 Magnum (WMR) before, so I’m not going to repeat it here.  Fortunately, this is softened somewhat by the fact that this little boltie accepts the Ruger 10/22 magnum 9-round magazine, which is (surprisingly) still available despite Ruger’s idiotic decision to discontinue their 10/22 rifle in this chambering.  (Oh, how I regret selling mine… it was a sweetie.)

I have no idea what this rifle’s trigger is like, but at its price point ($1,200 – $1,300!) it had better be faultless.  (Typical rifle prices in this chambering run about $250 – $550, but as far as I can see, the Tac-Sol is the only takedown available.)

Interesting, and definitely worth a look, especially for hikers and backpackers.  Here’s TacSol’s website.

All that said, however, I’d be more tempted by a regular bolt-action rifle such as this Savage Mark II, dressed with this fine Boyd’s “Minimalist” laminate stock:

…priced at Sportsman’s for $340.

Longtime Readers know well that I am a huge, unabashed fan of the venerable lever-action rifle, often called the “prairie assault rifle” because of its history in the settlement of the West, its ease of shooting and handling, and because of its capacious (for the time) magazine capacity.  Here’s a Marlin 336 in .30-30:

…which as we all know, is a gun I think should be given to all freshly-naturalized citizens immediately after the swearing-in ceremony, courtesy of the U.S. Government.

However, someone in some Marketing Department somewhere decided that the Marlin needed a facelift, and came up with this concept:

…adding to its capacity, so to speak, and lightening the thing by carving out holes in its (plastic!) stock to make up for all the weight added by the extra cartridges (I guess).

Well you know, I don’t have too much of a problem with the above modifications, other than the fact that they make for a truly fugly weapon, and are completely unnecessary in every sense of the word.  (I do make an exception for the red-dot sight device, because I can’t see the front sight anymore and I’m sure there are a bunch of Olde Pharttes in precisely my predicament — said Olde Pharttes being, I guess, the principal target market for such “improvements”.)

The problem is that as much as they want to make the lever-action rifle more resemble a modern semi-automatic rifle of the AR-15 genre, there’s no point because the AR-15 is a semi-automatic with a detachable magazine while the lever action is, well, not.

So then, assuming that you do want a handy semi-automatic rifle but you want to keep the spirit of the lever gun (light, handy, large-capacity magazine etc.), then allow me to suggest an alternative to the Frankenlever thing above:

Yes, it’s the equally-venerable M1 Carbine, made in the several millions, killed probably far more Nazis/Commies than the lever rifle killed Indians, and is the spiritual descendant of the lever rifle.  And if you want, you can add a red-dot sight to the M1 as well, using an Ultimak mount:

See?  I’ll bet that given the choice, the early settlers would have been quite happy with them — and you won’t have to mess around with loading round after round into a lever rifle either (and both Oliver Winchester and John Moses Browning can stop that dreadful grave-spinning, as a bonus).

Once more, that Evil Purveyor Of Death Steve Barnett shows us this (albeit misspelled) offering:

I talked a little but about the joys of single-shot hunting back here, and honestly, the rifle above touches all my buttons:  history, heritage, challenge, and peerless reliability.  Also, it looks wonderful.  (Here’s the whole story on this rifle and action type, and looking at this particular one, the “NP” — No Patent — stamp means it’s most likely a Gibbs-made rifle rather than an original Farquharson.)

The Farquharson action has been much copied, most recently by Ruger for its No. 1:

…and subsequent models of the same ilk.  But if you do a side-by-side comparison, the older rifle has it over the Ruger by a country mile.  Is that difference worth about $12,000?  Maybe not, but then someone who wants to buy a different rifle (that “history, heritage, challenge, and peerless reliability” thing) isn’t going to worry about such trifles.

Me, I’ll stick to my Browning High Wall — Chuck Hawks compares the Ruger and Browning here — but were I to venture into single-shot-dangerous-game hunting, I’d have to get something else, because the High Wall was never issued in anything larger than .45-70 Govt, and certainly not in the monster .577 NE.  (I suspect that the High Wall could handle the larger cartridge, but I’d only test it on someone else’s gun.)

Not that I’m ever likely to want to shoot the .577 NE, of course.  The Winchester .458 Magnum is about as high as (and maybe even a bit higher than) I would care to handle, according to my shoulder.

But for the collector, this Farq is lovely and in my opinion, worth every penny.