Will, I am sure no one can convince you about the Winchester, but if you have your finger on the trigger while disengaging the safety, then you are dangerous with a rifle. The winchester safety has a middle position only to allow you to cycle a bolt and the gun still will be in a safer mode than any gun with a two position safety of any type. The proper way to use the winchester is to have it on safe and move it through the middle part to the fire position just as if it were a two position job. If used this way, no one gets a surprise. I mean no disrespect in this commentary but your observations do not hold water on safety issues.

What I discovered last year was that just touching the trigger when the safety is in the mid-position will release the sear so that when the safety is pushed to the fire position it goes bang!

The only way around this is either keep my finger off the trigger entirely! or increase the trigger pull to some gigantic value. I was unaware that this is how the safety works. I know better now. Of course this is not how things work with a 2-position safety.

I still maintain that the 3-position safety sucks. I do not see any reason for it in practice. I think it is potentially dangerous and it is wasted motion from safe-to-on, especially in a dangerous situation. I just do not like it. But hopefully I will have enough sense not to pull that stunt again.

Will,

The M/70 3 position safety is designed to hold the firing pin off the sear in the middle position (2nd) as well as the rear position (3rd). If you pull the trigger while the safety in the middle position, take your finger off the trigger, then take the safety off and the firing pin falls, you have a system that does not have the correct firing pin lift-off. When you put the safety on it should move the firing pin assembly back about .020". This will insure that the firing pin and sear will re-engage after the trigger is pulled. If this does not happen. Then the cocking piece should be qualified to obtain the lift-off.

This can happen if the firing pin assembly has been replaced or someone has tried to smooth up the safety by polishing the cam area of the safety and not checking the lift-off.

Headache

The three-position Model 70 safety is a superb design in every way. It only suffers from occasional misadjustment, and sundry operator error.

Two-position safeties, now THOSE 'suck'...........

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What you need to do now is remove a small amount of material from the cocking piece where it engages the trigger.