quote:

Originally posted by Alberta Canuck:
IMHO,ALL M70 datings up through the demise of the New Haven corporation are "probably"s, not absolute facts.

Those familiar with Winchester operations should be aware that the factory had inventories of actions and barrels for many years up to (and after) 1964. Custom Gun Shop of Edmonton, Alberta used to send in almost all of the pre-'64s it got at low prices, to have them rebarreled. The shop would simply specify "any unusual or rare chambering or cartridge", and back would come some truly amazing stuff which had been discontinued for many years....for example one sent in came back with a factory-original barrel in .300 Savage! (They tried like crazy to get me to take it home for $165 Canadian, but making one of the poorer judgements of my life, I refused it.)

That was also possible with replacement M70 actions. A customer brought in a pre-war M70 in 1972 or '73, which had the rear receiver ring split wide open along a hidden seam in the metal. It was sent back to Winchester for replacement. The customer was warned that it would come back with an action with a different tang than the one sent in...no clover-leaf...and a different serial number. When it came back, it had a brand new (NOS) "clover-leaf" action! Different serial number, but identical otherwise to the one sent in.

I should also mention that when Winchester replaced factory pre-'64 M70 barrels with ones of the same chambering as the original gun and barrel, the new replacement barrels would have no predictable date stamp...the dates I saw coming back from them in the 1972-'73 era, had date stamps ranging all the way from 1940 through 1964. And you could NOT request any particular year. They would rebarrel upon request, but you got whatever year the barrel they grabbed out of stock had on it.

There are numerous good books out there on M'70s, but few if any mention what would likely happen if a Model 70 was rebarreled even by the Winchester "New Haven" facility.