I had a thread in January about this rifle. I thought I would update it and ask, "what the heck is going on at Winchester". When I purchased this rifle the chamber had such a bad case of reamer chatter (Hexagonal chamber) that I took it back to the retailer. Their smiths tried to polish it out and could not. So they sent it back to Winchester. It came back from Winchester with a new barreled action. The barrel, chamber and lug groove area was so dirty with machine shop debris that I would not shoot it until I had cleaned it. When I went to shoot it it would not chamber factory ammo. I took it back to the retailer and asked if they could close the bolt on a go gage; They could not. The chamber is too short. So the retailer reamed it an estimated 0.004 to 0.006 inch deeper and test fired it. It will now chamber, fire, and extract, but still closes hard on "as fired brass". I like to be able to re-chamber fired brass to check for an out of round chamber, so that I can neck size if I want to. Maybe once I neck size the brass it will chamber without resistance. Am I asking for too much when I want a round chamber and the correct chamber dimensions?

Some friends of mine that shoot High Power have said that they have had alot of trouble with Winchester barrels. They said that Winchester barrels are terrible and Winchesters Quality Control is out of control. I am disappointed in Winchester, but somehow I still like this rifle; am I part of the problem?

You are not the problem. Big "W"s quality is spotty at best.

I bought one used (not fired though) recently, purchased new at the end of 2002 I think. Have the original receipt somewhere. Anyways, nice sights, one piece bottom metal steel triggerguard and all. Shot great (10 test rounds). Sent it to my gunsmith to fix a problem with the barrel band due to previous own and a pair of pliers. His comment (not verbatim):

Must have farmed it out because it is too good to be done in their shop.

Basically this reinforces what you have realized, overall their quality has dropped, sad too for such a once great company.

Hope everything works out for you with yours.

Red