I was thinking how handy it would be to have a cartridge thumb cut in the receiver of my Mod. 70 to speed up reloading. Anyone ever do that?

Sometimes the cartridges loaded on the left of the mag box sort of hide in the lug cut and it would be easier to get them down in the magazine with two fingers.

You mean like the cut out on the left side of military m98s to facilitate stripper clip use? If so I think it might be interesting to give it a try as it seems to me that loading a m70 is slower than a mauser.

Get yourself a customized military mauser like a real man.

Gotta agree with 500grains, if you want a thumb cut use a Mauser, or a 1903 Springfield. One of the advantages of the Win 54 which became the 70 over the Mauser & 1903 was the very stiff receiver and thicker siderails, made them more accurate. Later actions including the current 70 kept this characteristic. If you cut a thumb slot you will lose this, kill the resale value, and not have any nostalgia gain anyway.

Well, I just noticed that the CZ 550 I have has the very slot I'm desiring. Can't see the forest for the trees I guess.



I don't much care about its resale value or whether it will affect its accuracy, which would be nigh on impossible at 25 yards. Reloading speed is the goal.



Full steam ahead.

I've often wondered why thumb cuts are not standard on rifles meant to be "dangerous game rifles". As mentioned before, the whole point of the thumb cut is to facilitate rapid reloading with stripper clips.

I know that most rifles have scopes now and a stripper clip would not work, but a true "DGR" is more battle rifle than hunting rifle anyway. As such the design should be geared more toward what the WWI German soldier needed - reliability and firepower - over what the modern 300 yard target shooter needs. I mean, why bother with a scope when all work should be under 100 yards?

Can you imagine a nice CZ or custom M70 that held 5 or 6 down with a couple of stripper clips of spare ammo at your waist? That would negate all the noise about whether or not you could single load your CRF under pressure or not.

See, I'm not crazy. Well, not all the time.

The point is that there may be times when the magazine goes empty and there is still lively activity, when a round or two needs to get fed into the magazine in a hurry, not so much a whole stripper full.

The problem with my Mod. 70 is that the .416 Rem. cartridge will slide into the left hand side lug channel/raceway sometimes when it is going onto the left side of the magazine stack, greatly slowing down reloading because it has to be fished out of the raceway. A thumb cut on the left would allow the left thumb to keep the cartidge over the top of the magazine. I could see it being even a bigger help with a rifle that had a scope.

The thumb cut was originally intended to enable the shooter to clear a single cartridge or debris from the left raceway. It obviously makes loading with a stripper clip easier should you use your left hand, but standard doctrine was to hold the rifle with your left hand and load the rifle with your right hand.

Many commercial mausers by Brno, FN and Husqvarna kept the stripper clip feature but had a solid left wall, much to my disappointment.

I have heard horror stories of folks cutting a thumb slot in the Model 70 and other non-mauser actions. The result was a bolt that binds when closing. The 98 has a guide rib on top of the bolt body to prevent this. I would not recommend modifying any other action except a commercial 98.

Since I have nevered really consciously practiced reloading, what I have found in retrospect is the butt of the rifle in my crotch, the left hand palm/fingers underneath the receiver/magazine up against the trigger guard. This way your left hand thumb is free to hold the catridges away from the raceway.

I'm not sure a full blown Mod. 98 thumb cut is needed, as the CZ 550 has a cutout just on the top of the receiver and seems to work just fine, for me. So it should work the same on a Mod. 70 since it is essentially the same design and construction as the CZ.