Please educate this hillbilly who has come late to the Winchester CRF banquet table.
It seems there is the potential for unacceptable variability in the vertical relationship between the front and rear receiver bridges, verdad? Is the main purpose for surface grinding the outside of the upper receiver to normalize the relationship between the bridges (and also to make sure the respective curves match the engineering blueprints)?
The scope mount base screw holes on my recently (very cheaply) acquired Winchesters seem to be fairly well lined up. I imagine that a mill can enlarge those to 8x40 dimensions and simultaneously ensure that everything is dressed right and covered down. That is a small blessing for which I am grateful.
I noticed that the bolt comes apart very easily. That is nice. No tugging/twisting/swearing with a doubled over shoelace on the cocking piece.
The safety lever seemed pretty loose/sloppy/gritty/inconsistent to me. What magic do the talented gunsmiths use to correct that? I read a description in one of the glossy gun rags a few years back, but the author had his nose so far up the gunsmith's ass the description was a bit muffled.
What is the best after-market replacement extractor?
The trigger and sear arrangement is delightfully simple and straight forward. Are the original pieces made of good quality steel, or should they be replaced? IF so, what are the best ones out there? Same question for the cocking piece.
Are these receivers mis-aligned on the inside often enough, and to a large enough amount to warrant having the inside bored true?
The box/bottom metal/follower will be a Blackburn 3x for the 300 Win Mag and a 4x for the 416 Rem Mag so I'm not too worried about that.
Again, I'm not interested commissioning a work of art. Beauty is generally wasted on my sorry assed philistine self. I am looking for a pretty accurate, pretty smooth, dead-nuts reliable pair of working rifles.
The metal finish will be some flat colored wonder industrial coating on a tastefully bead blasted metal surface. The stock finish will be Polane in a scintillating shade of flat olive drab green.

I really appreciate the information. This way I won't waste my gunsmith's time by nannering on, and he in turn can get all of your guns done sooner.
JCN

Can't answer all your questions...

Triggers - the original equipment does real well. You can get them to be just as crisp as anything and perfectly safe down to about 2 3/4 pounds or so. Replacing the pins with bigger ones ground to a tight fit may be a good thing as some triggers will have an unacceptable side to side wobble and tighter pins will help. My gunsmith used very thin brass shims to take out the sideplay on one of mine and this seems to work quite well also.

Safety - hit or miss. The first one's I owned would pop off of third position (all the way back) with a mere zephyr. The last three I bought all worked very nicely and surely. A third detent on the safety lever pivot part - the thingy that goes into the bolt body (technical term) will help hold the safety in the rear position. Otherwise, yes, a decent polishing will smooth things up some.

Extractor - I have three from Williams and they work well. Frankly, the original ones worked okay but then I never stressed them much. Probably more a "maybe better" than a 100% gotta have it, but spring steel is definitley better than MIM powder. However, I hear USRAC is putting spring steel extractors on their latest Model 70's - but I have no idea how recently this started. Maybe tiggertate - Matt Williams of the same name as the extractors - could tell us as I suspect they are using his products.

Hopefully others will chime in on the receiver dimensional stuff.

Thanks Jim,
One of the rifles has a pretty steady trigger for the side to side movement. The other one is pretty wobbly, and needs to be bushed.

I'll order a couple extractors from Matt on Monday.

I'm listening to Warren Zevon's last album as I type this. It broke my heart when he died (lung cancer in his early fifties). He does an incredible rendition of Bob Dylan's "Knocking on Heaven's Door". I better go to bed before I start blowing snot on the keyboard.

JCN

Doc, Reason for Precise grinding of the seating area for scope bases on any receiver ( and milling the bases to fit !) was to provide a stable platform for the bases of maximum foot-print. If the base to receiver is a hit and miss fit, it usually means that the attachment of said base to receiver can and often does vary with the stress on the screws, and that in turn by the threads themselves. Normal flexing during firing and temperature rise from firing can change the relationship of the base to receiver fit, which can affect stress on scope tube and that in turn alter the relationship between reticle and barrel bore. Skewed off drilling on P 64 70's was reasonably rare prior to 1958. Made to fit bases can be offset drilled and not look glaringly so -up to a point. Leupold had heat treated screws starting with the STD bases that were usable with the competition. The original spec for what the market thinks is a 6x 48 screw in the 54 and 70 ring ( and later the bridge in the 70) Was a .142" diameter by 48 threads. Also the size they used for dovetail bases to the outside adjust scopes they made long ago. A size 6 screw diameter is usually given as .137". Problem right there when you have some gun manufacturers on the Unified system ( special) and Winch. on their own. Keep in mind that Winch got there first.

Extractors. Unless bubba-ised can be manipulated to accomplish the task of an extractor in most cases. Extractor collar ( ring that holds it) might be advisable.
Wisner had these in the past.

Thanks Tom,

That makes so much sense even I can get my mind around the concepts:
Grind and mill for complete, normalized contact. Drill and tap so the screws and holes fit each other and the holes are lined up correctly, again to reduce the stress on the system.
I'll check on the collars.

Basically what I bought was a serial number attached to a receiver in the rough. Fair enough.

JCN

Doc, Love that final line in your post. I've come close when trying to steer the determined and romantically driven pre-64 seekers who simply must have one for that ultimate custom piece, but never that concisely. These worthies haunted the gun bordello's, looking for that choice virgin, and simply could not accept the notion it was better to leave suitability to he who must put the choice to hammer and anvil for the fashioning.

I suspect that you would be my kind of saw bones!

Mucho kudos