Is it me or has there been a huge drop in quality from the big gun makers? I expect to do some work on every gun I buy but it is getting to the point where the last two rifles I got (new) were not even serviceable from the box.
One was a Winchester 416rem the other a Ruger #1 45-70. Both guns had the threads in the receiver so out of square that there wasn't enough adjustment in the scope to get to paper. The Win shot, no BS, 10 feet low @ 100 yds. The Ruger 6.5 feet left. The Ruger was easy to fix with an adjustable base but the Win will require recutting the threads. Both are project guns so nothing is really lost but what about the guy going to Africa or wherever and buys a gun only to find out he might as well throw the dam thing at the critter.
Sorry for the rant but this is getting ridiculous.

Fritz454- You know the answer, good machining is expensive! Why bother when Blue-locktite is so cheap? Most gunbuyers wouldn't ever know anyway as they only shoot the things once a year at most! Your asking for too much!-Rob

fritz454,

I agree with you, however the other side has to be looked at as well - the buyer.
Everyone seems to now buy on price and so the manufacturers are responding
to this as well. As Boddington says in one of his books about the 60's and 70's
"Cheap, Cheap Cheap"

As Rodgunbuilder says "Most gunbuyers wouldn't ever know anyway".

Those that do know go to people like Rodgunbuilder an spend the money to get something
done correctly and well (I don't know Rodgunbuilder nor have I seen any of his guns but
his posts on the forum show he knows. The same reason I use Custom Gunsmiths).

500 Nitro

Hi Fritz454,
How are you coming along with your bullet manufacturing and being able to ship to Canada?

Take care,
Dave

Point taken.
It just seems to me that for their long term survival and that of our sport a little attention to detail is required. Imagine the first time gun buyer going to John Doe's shooting supply and dropping $600 on a rifle, $300 on a scope and mounts, another $100 or so for some ammo and of he/she goes to the local range. After exhausting all of the ammo he/she hasn�t hit a sight in target. One bad experience like that and that person will likely never give shooting another try and will also inform others to that experience further reducing the pool for future fellow shooters.
I well understand that quality costs but to produce and ship guns that have the threads that far out of alignment is indicative of not giving a damm. It is all fixturing. Now maybe there needs to be some investment to improve or rebuild some of these pieces of tooling but repair work is far more expensive and in the end the cost of tooling is small. This is something I know first hand.
I remember the first gun I ever got. A Remington 700 mountain rifle in 30-06, I know go easy on me. The Knowledgeable sales guy mounted a Redfield scope and bore-sighted it for me, a couple of boxes of ammo and off to the range. First shot hit dead center and 2" high. My first 5 shots were a solid 2.5" group and I was hooked. Now I don't want to even begin to try to add up the money I�ve spent on shooting and hunting in the ever increasing years since but that first good experience made an instant and lifelong shooter out of me. A crappy experience might have turned me off entirely and that would have been a small step to the demise of the sport.
I'm not claiming that my business is the lifeblood of the industry but each loss to our ranks of open-minded people to the other side reduces us all and hurts the manufacturers and the shooters.
Something else to keep in mind is that production equipment has made HUGE improvements since I bought that 30-06. These improvements have, in all of the other industries I�m associated with, increased production, lowered costs, improved quality, all but eliminated part to part variations, lowered the required skill level needed to make a complex part, (no excuse �no one knows how to do that anymore�), and made fixturing a breeze and usually less complicated because we can work in so many planes at the same time. I make parts today in 15 minutes that would have taken days 20 years ago.
What it comes down to is why was I able to buy a $350 rifle 25 years or so ago that shot great and was produced with the equipment of the time but with $600 and today�s equipment I can�t get anything but a baseball bat.
John

Dave,
Moving at the speed of government. BATF is now BATFE. The "E" being explosives. They are understaffed and can't give me much information other than "We're working on it". I've got one of my State Senators making an inquiry with BATFE but I have low expectations on his ability to move it along. Believe me I'm chomping at the bit to get going on this. I have a lathe I bought a few months ago that I won't run anything on but the brass/copper for bullets and it sits idle. It makes for one hell of an expensive paperweight.
I'll keep you posted on how I make out with the Senator.
John

[ 09-05-2003, 05:28: Message edited by: fritz454 ]

Fritz,

You are correct and Rob is right. Most don't know what a quality rifle is and to tell you the truth, I don't think most of them care.

I found this link intersting:
http://www.african-hunter.com/lessons_learned.htm

What I got out of it was that the only good DGR rifle is a very worked over FN Mauser for a price the average person couldn't afford.
It almost sounded like the Gentleman was saying:
"If you can't afford one of THESE, stay home."
I realize this course is for Professional guides/hunters, though.
The author's comments in that regard are right on.
I'd hope anyone not in that profession would not be scared off by the money involved in that particular style of gun.

Maybe that is the reason more people don't get into the sport.
There may BE a preferred rifle style for a DGR, but, Holy $moke$...
The other thing is that other rifles are fine for hunting anything else, but many people/places/forums will denegrate anything BUT the 'preferred' DGR action/style, even though it may NOT be what that hunter is in need of or inquiring about.
I suspect many prospective enthusiasts are put off by or confused by that mindset.

On the level of quality issue mentioned, I haven't been 'into guns' but for a scant 10 years, so I don't really know about the quality differences before then.
I've done my best to support the industry and piss off the Wife in that time, though!

While the quality of new made rifles appears to be the lowest ever, there does seem to be more good custom and semi-custom makers out there than ever. Also lots of used custom rifles at good prices.

too bad winnie won't just sell the safari express actions, cheap....

400 would be a decent deal...
John,
I can't wait for you to get your batfe certs... my 500 misses your bullets... and would liek to talk to you about an interested thing for my bp...

jeffe

Busmaster007, Interesting article. It basically makes my case that the factory rifles today are not worth much at all. The difference is that the writer suggests that it is best to stay away from the large manufacturers entirely. I'm of the opinion that once the likes of Remington, Ruger, Winchester etc. knew how and did produce serviceable rifles that could be used out of the box. They need to do that again. I'm not talking about an action as smooth as glass, or a trigger that has no creep and breaks at 3 lbs, or shoots .2" 10 shot groups, just a workable deer rifle for the first time guy or gal ready to give shooting a try. Success breeds success.

MikeIravy-There are a lot of good custom guns out there but some real crap as well. How can a beginning shooter know the difference? It's a good thing for the number of custom/semi-custom makers out there because a first time DG hunter would have to schedule building their rifle before setting a date for the hunt. I would guess that the typical wait for a custom gun to be built is a year or more, imagine if the number of builders was half of what it is now.

Jeffeosso - $400 for a Winchester action. I�ll take 10 to start. Hopefully we�ll be feeding your 500 with your Jeffe Spls soon.

I don�t want to belabor this but today when I but a factory rifle I have almost no expectation that it will shoot to hit paper at 100 yards and am in fact jump for joy happy if one does. The US automakers when through the same quality issues in the 70s and 80s, thankfully, they turned it around and today make an excellent product that competes with anything out there. The gun manufacturers need to learn from their example or they to will die off like T-rex. If that happens it will be bad news for us all.

Given the price of tooling, Machining a receiver and cutting the action treads before the action is hardened/tempered is probably the real reason why the threads are out of line with the action centerline. cutting threads in hardened steel simply costs too much these days. I have seen some threads done by winchester recently that look like they were cut with a dull- tap. I'm not kidding when I said they use Blue-locktite to make up for the misallignment and to keep the barrels from unscrewing themselves. Unfortunately CZ also uses this practice, but the Mauser design with a primary torque shoulder and secondary barrel shoulder lock-up tends to keep things straighter apparantly.-Rob

Rob you are right the threads in the actions of today are extremely sloppy and do look like a kid used a hand tap and a vise. My point is IF the big manufacturers wanted to do a better job they could for minimal cost. There are CBN coated inserts, which would make easy work on a 4140 at a Rockwell around 42. The technology is there to do it right. They don't want to.
Also, they were doing a much better job years ago when NCs and CNCs were still not on the scene. My question is why? I know the answer but it doesn't bode well for us gun enthusiasts. They don't care to make a solid product only maximize the money with no reinvestment into technology. What happens when the tooling and machinery they have craps out or becomes unserviceable. Will the owners liquidate whatever assets they have and be gone. The antigun group will get their wish because there will be no one making a workable $600 rifle for the average person. No one shoots. No one cares if antigun laws are enacted and we are SOL.
By the way the Winchester that shot 10 feet low at 100 Yards had the threads at almost 2 degrees from centerline. I can do better by hand.

Rant mode off.

My point earlier was that people either don't know or care what they buy, companies will sell what they can sell.

If you were to write this up, take photos and do one by hand better than the factory and send all this in packets to the CEO and boardmembers, plus the top 10 shareholders, I would bet money you'd get a response. Yes it takes time, yes it involves expense on your part, imagine though if everyone who got a crappy rifle wrote a letter and took a couple of pix and sent them to the CEO's office? Feces rolls down-hill and it assuredly will continue to do so. Quality would take a turn for the better if the top knows that buyers demand quality.

Fritz

Did you go back to the retailer with either of those rifles and describe your problem? From what you describe, both rifles exceed even the manufacturers sloppy standards, and should have been replaced.
There was one fellow from that used to bring a micrometer and a straight edge into the gun store to check every new rifle that he bought to see if the receiver was at least eye ball square to the reciever and it paid off.

The model 70 problem is no surprise. It is a notrorious problem with more recent model 70's. They can't seem to make the action rings line up. Some are low/high, but most are left/right. If you put a Leupold type rear base on them, you have to offset some up to 1/2" off center, just to boresight. I hear that Talley Manufacturing knows quite a bit about this problem as well. I'm sure they have some horror stories.
I was surprised to hear about the #1. Could that have been in the integral scope mount cutouts?

To get a decent rifle, comparable, to say, a pre-64 standards, there is Dakota, or a few Dakota-like.

There are good rifles out there just no one wants to spend the money. Gee, what is $300 25 years ago worth now? Who is going to spend the money? Virtually nobody. It is no surprise CZ's are so popular. A decent rifle, cheap.

When I was in high school, the Browning ads had the superposed for $318. How many guys are going to shell out $5000 now for something similar.

"Gun buyers" have a $400 - $600 mind set, no matter what. That's why they are still $400 to $600.

I have often thought that many of the manufacturers are in cities and states that are anti-gun. Their employees are just there for a job, not because like guns and want to make them. They might as well flip burgers for all they care. I always feel better, and can say expirence better quality when the maker is small, and from out west, or a rural area.

Doesn't CZ, and Savage make very accurate, reasonably priced rifles?

Sides what do expect when rifles are made by the UAW?

gs

Damn- you always get a plethora of these complaints everytime MSC has a sale on 1 inch X 12-16 TPI pipe taps! The TiCN coated ones last the longest I hear! We should all buy lots of stock in the company that makes Blue-locktite.-Rob

Well fellows, all this started in 1964! The "prod" was lightly greased, and slid in very slowly, and it seems nobody noticed! When the first rifle action chambered for a dangerous game cartridge, was made in the cheap Push feed format, we should not have accepted it, and told the makers why. Those who did notice, simply went to the Europian makes, that still made them right!

Changing makers was a fix for them! But the guy who knew what was happening, failed the guy who simply wanted a decent deer rifle, because they didn't tell him he was being screwed, till he was used to the rape! Once the makers found out most would accept this, they started a campain, of reduced quality, to see how far they could go before the buyers quit buying. It seems they haven't hit bottom yet, because people are still accepting the junk being made today, and finishing the work they paid for, themselves!

Now, when you try to tell a generation that has become used to the junk made today, they say you are nitpicking! People today accept the bean counter designs, and buy anyway, so the makers are certainly not going to tell them, or make a more costly firearm, unless forced to. The only way to force quality is, not to accept less than quality, and refuse to buy the junk, and to tell the makers you are not buying their second rate junk!
The reduction in quality was not to benefit the buyer, but to improve the profit margin for the stock holders, and because the old guys, who knew what a quality product was, didn't tell the next generation, we have to live with the junk of today. It seems it is too late, because the shooters of today seem to accept anything!

I'm always hearing horror stories such as these, but I've never touched a rifle such as these. I ran a gun store for 5 years and wouldn't even venture a guess as to how many factory rifles i've sighted in, and most were Model 70's, Rem 700's and Ruger 77's. I've of course owned enough to fill a good-sized warehouse and I've had a grand total of one that was a truly sour shooter. Almost all factory rifles with factory ammo taken at random shot 1.5" 3 shot groups, and that's hunting accuracy anywhere. By the way, my one sour rifle was a Rhiimakki Sako (probably spelled wrong) in .222 Remington of all things! It shot about 3" at 25 yards and about every other bullet hit the target broadside.( keyholed) This was caused by an awful barrel crown you could see with the naked eye, after fixing, it still shot about 1.25, not great. So much for European quality. Of course this is not normal, in my opinion, the Sako is likely the best for average out of box accuracy of any factory rifle. I know there were a lot of the older Rugers with cheap barrels, but I haven't seen a 77 MKII that wouldn't shoot when the trigger has been worked properly. It seems to me that one bad rifle gets a lot of press, you have less problems with guns in general, than any other product bought in the USA. Scopes fall in the same category. I sold a bunch of them and used a lot also, never sent back a Leupold, used to say that about Burris, but had to send mine back this year, it was mounted on a .375, and the crosshair turned about 40 degrees, somehow was still sighted in though. I mailed it to Burris on a Monday and got it back on Friday repaired. It still made me a little nervous, so didn't take this one to Africa on the .375. I'm not saying factory rifles have a finish, etc like a custom, but I could hunt the rest of my life with a Ruger 77, and don't expect to work on them either except for a trigger job. While I was in Africa, my son (15) used my 77 in 7x57 and our PH was amazed a rifle like that could be purchased for $400, and was trying to figure out how to get one over there.

Jstevens, the very long post above is typical of what the shooter of today is willing to accept as QUALITY! If it shoots a group of under 2" at 100 yds out of the GREEN box, then it is OK!

What about the cheap urathane finish on the wood, wood, I might add, that would barely make a STANDARD GRADE from a 90 % finished stock blank from Fajen in the sixties. A piece of wood that looks like it was inlet with copious use of a boyscout hatchet! Brazed on bolt handles, plastic magazines, sights that are miss aligned, scope base holes drilled off center, barrels out of line with the action. Safeties that do not block the fireing pin, and that let the rifle fire, when released, after it has been bounced about a bit. Push feed actions, that are only in existance, because they are cheap to make, but chambered for dangerous game cartridges. Extractors that are best discribed as beer can material. Plunger ejectors that fail with a light layer of dust, or a little too much oil.

None of the things, I've mentioned, were placed on current firearms to benefit the shooter,or to improve the firearm, but simply to improve the bottom line of the makers, and profits of the stock holders. Accuracy is the only thing that every firearm should have without question. A quality firearm should have the other things as well. simply good wood, reliable CONTROL feeding, that FEEDS, Bolt handles that are forged, not glued on, real bedding, not the so-called post bedding, which is simply a cheap method of getting out of proper bedding, nothing more.

The rifles of today follow the rest of the throw away values people have come to accept in everything they buy. The makers of today simply throw these things together, and let the buyer try to finish it himself.

If you are sattisfied with the product of today, then buy it, it is available at any K-Mart, or Wally world. I say if you want to use a slammed together $600 rifle, that may, or may not work, when the chips are down, to go on $20,000 hunt, be my guest, I'll go on one less hunt, and buy a "RIFLE", not a stamped out Tonka Toy!

In short, they suck. My first move with a new gun is straight to the smith.
s

Hey, Mac.
How do REALLY feel about Remington 700's?

I well remember when pre 64 m-70s were for sale. Nobody I knew could afford one. We all used Krag's or some other war booty rifle. Jump forward 50 years and not much is changed. Most folks still can't afford or won't spend the money for a rifle of old M-70 quality. Therefore we have near junk from the mass production companies, but decent rifles are available to those who will spend the money for a Dakota, Kimber, Ed Brown etc. These don't cost any more in inflation adjusted dollars than the M-70 of yore.

Mac_ I don't own a rifle that shoots 2" groups including a .30-30 with Williams peep sight and standard front. I don't particularly like a Remington at all, my Rugers are controlled round feeding, and I also own a couple of .375's on a Mauser action, haven't shot a factory round from a fucking green box in the last 20 years. My statement was that I have never seen a truly awful shooting rifle that shot 6 ft to one side, etc. I don't claim my Ruger has nice wood, although I have a Magnum .416 that does. I will assure you that my 7x57 will certainly kill game with the best of them, and feeds fine. I can sure tell a lot more difference shooting a custom pistol compared to a stock one than I can between a custom rifle and a Ruger, etc. I've also never noticed that the custom wood on my Sako ever killed anything. It's nice and I like a high quality rifle, but I could kill game from now on with the Rugers.