I stopped in the MRC factory in Kalispell Monday and looked at the plant, machinery, actions and talked to some of the personel. This was a casual tour and not one with hardball questions that a purchasing manager would ask in a formal vendor survey.

Dan and others greeted me and I was treated with a warm welcome and shown the facility and introduced to many of the personel.

The plant is clean and well organized. Since this is not a formal survey as mentioned above I am going to just wait to see what they ship. The actions that I looked at seem to be an awful lot for the money and I am looking forward, as much as ever for mine.

As to the concerns that the actions need to be slicked. The do need some lubricant and the ones that I worked were dry. In general they would not need much work at all to be equal or better than the average post war - pre 64 M 70 in terms of smoothness.

Overall this is a really handsome action. Mine are going to be hard working hunting rifles but these actions would make a fine show rifle also.

Savage, thanks a bunch for sharing this with us. It is good to hear an objective, yet positive report - makes waiting more bearable
- mike

Did you by chance see mine?

Yes Rootbeer I saw yours.

I was shown both a RH long and RH short action and I got to cycle each, pull the triggers and work the safeties.

The trigger pulls were light, crisp and with no backlash. The safety on the short needed some lube or slicking to be perfect. I discussed the idea I have where I put a lighter spring in the safety and add a little detent for the full safe position as this really slicks them up. I doubt they will do it as it's not "M 70".

The serial numbers on the actions and calibers on the barrels are electro etched and are a very fine touch.

[ 07-23-2003, 08:22: Message edited by: Savage 99 ]

You didn't see mine; mine's an LH long in stainless. Good to know you did see something. No word on when the first steel pours for full-on production, eh?

Thank you Savage99 for coming by our shop and for the kind words you wrote here about your tour. You met up with one of our salemen "Scot". I hope he was informative and helpful. He usually is. It was a pleasure meeting with you and finally putting a face to your user name.