Innholdsfortegnelse for July/August 2021 i RifleShooter

Wonderful Winchester After reading Mr. Miller’s article on the Winchester 67A (pictured above, May/June), I had to dig out my father’s rifle. I customized it for my daughter when she started smallbore by committing sacrilege—installing aperture sights and a trigger stop. After adding an offset extended cocking knob, which as a young lady she still had trouble pulling, I added a leather lanyard, which worked great. It is a great shooter, serving her well until she upgraded to a Walther. John Payton Taylor, Jr. Bedding Matters I love your magazine but would like to make a suggestion. Whenever you do a rifle review, I want to know what type of action bedding it utilizes. Pillar bed, glass bed, aluminum block, V-block or no bedding at all. I’d like to see…

In rearming with new cartridge-firing guns after the Civil War, many states chose different ones than the U.S. Army. Remington, Peabody and Sharps rifles armed many, and all initially competed to become the arm of the United States. A main contender for the U.S. Army’s first official cartridge rifle was the Remington rolling block, a design perfected by Joseph Rider and among the few that easily made the jump from rimfire to centerfire rounds. Made in the millions by Remington and under license to others, it was used worldwide. While our Army ultimately went with the Springfield Trapdoor, the Navy chose the Model 1867 Remington-made rolling block carbine in .50-45, then ordered a further 10,000 Model 1870 rolling block rifles in .50-70 Gov’t made at Springfield Armory under license. The…

One of the most innovative scopes on the market just got better. SIG’s Sierra 3 BDX introduced a scope/phone/rangefinder Blue-tooth team-up to provide shooters with digital holdover and wind-hold aiming points on the reticle. Now with the new Sierra 6 BDX, you get that in a 6X zoom range: 2-12x40mm, 3-18x44mm and 5-30x56mm, plus a new, thinner reticle with 194 LED aiming points, plus wind holds. I won’t go into detail on how this system works because Brad Fitzpatrick covered it well in an article you can read at RIFLE SHOOTERMAG.COM ; just type SIG BDX into our search engine. He did note how easy it was to set up and use, which is good news for those who consider such technology suspect because it’s too complicated. For a scope…

Colt introduced a lever-action rifle in .44-40 Win. in 1883. It must have been a good one because Winchester management initiated an agreement whereas Winchester would discontinue the development of a revolver designed by former Colt employee William Mason and Colt would stop making lever-action rifles. Determined to remain a player in the deer rifle market, Colt developed a slide-action rifle. Because it was capable of spitting lead quicker than anything made by Winchester, it was called the Lightning. The first model in .22 Short and .22 Long was introduced in 1885. It was soon followed by a centerfire rifle with two action lengths: one for the .38-40 and .44-40 Win. and a longer length for the .45-85 Win. and .50-95 Express. The Lightning proved to be less than successful…

Gen. Hiram Berdan barnstormed the world, electrifying all with the power and range of his unique .42-caliber brass-cased, bottleneck cartridge firing a paper-patched bullet in his new turn-bolt rifle. Almost every country adopted some manner of the basic bottleneck cartridge firing such a bullet. Many were in the equally new Remington rolling block or other single-shots, while some embraced the bolt action that would soon dominate the world. However, in the United States the thought of a cartridge less than a half-inch long was unthinkable. The fundamental changes to long-range ballistics Berdan’s cartridge delivered were initially unappreciated. Cartridges made of brass were equally unproven. Copper cases had known weaknesses such as softness, poor expansion/contraction and often burst in the chamber. Such weaknesses should have caused copper to be abandoned early,…

Attorney, inventor and gun maker Charles Newton (1868–1932) believed in velocity. Before World War I he created a family of fast unbelted cartridges that might still be with us if just one of his several attempts at manufacturing rifles had succeeded. His .256 Newton (actually a 6.5mm) was based on the .30-06 case, similar to the wildcat 6.5-06. The .30, .33, .35 and .40 Newtons were based on the fat 11.2x72 Schuler case, and thus were forerunners to our current fat-cased unbelted magnums. Sadly, by 1925 the last of Newton’s four rifle companies failed. Today his rifles and cartridges are largely forgotten, but Newton left a major contribution in his collaboration with Savage Arms. In 1912 he created the .22 Savage High-Power for Arthur Savage. Based on the .25-35 case…

Many rifle shooters gunsmith their own rifles, including rebedding stocks or even fitting a new stock. This became easier when epoxy resins became available after World War II, when several companies offered unfinished, semi-inletted stocks for zillions of “war surplus” rifles. The barreled action could be pressed into inletting smeared with fresh-mixed epoxy, which conformed closely to the metal, and uncountable numbers of garage gunsmiths turned military rifles into hunting rifles. This activity peaked in the 1960s, when another gun use for epoxy appeared: synthetic stocks formed in a mold with fiberglass cloth and epoxy. Many rifle traditionalists considered this the end of civilization, but some people are more flexible than others. In the 1980s I started fitting both kinds of stocks to my rifles and eventually did stock work…

As popular as the lever-action rifle has been in this country, you would think there would be more rimfire lever-gun options. But with the departure of Ruger, Marlin and Winchester from this segment over the years, we’re left with just three: various Henrys; the Browning BL-22; and the subject of this review, the Rossi Rio Bravo. The rifle is based on the company’s R92 centerfire lever action. It’s available with a black polymer stock—complete with M-Lok-type slots for mounting lights and lasers—or with a German beechwood stock. Traditionalist that I’ve become, I chose the latter. The Rio Bravo has an 18-inch barrel with dual barrel bands, a full-length 15-round tubular magazine and, as I mentioned, a German beechwood stock. What is German beechwood, you ask? It’s what the lumber folks…

There was a time when I hated ARs. Well, hate is probably too strong a word; I just didn’t have any interest in them. I thought they were great guns for military/law enforcement and NRA service rifle competitions, but I was a hunter and couldn’t see their application in hunting. Do keep in mind, however, it was in 1964 that Colt started selling AR-15s to the civilian market, and then only in .223 Rem., which was considered a varmint cartridge and loaded as such by all the big ammunition manufacturers. The sudden availability of Colt’s AR-15 created nary a ripple with hunters, whom I suspect felt pretty much as I did. Once Colt’s patents ran out in the mid-1970s, other manufacturers started producing ARs, and wildcatters came up with all…

Reloading dies are not all created equal. Basic dies are of adequate quality and offer simple, serviceable capability at an affordable price. Premium dies provide higher quality and advanced features such as interchangeable neck bushings and micrometer-adjustable seating depth. And then there are Lyman’s new Pro reloading dies. A cut above, they are designed to provide handloaders the ability to load match-quality ammo in high volume, with a minimum of maintenance. While the Pro reloading dies are suitable for use with all single-stage and turret-type reloading presses, the first characteristic that sets them apart is that they are also optimized for use with high-volume progressive reloading presses. Plus, several advanced features are isolated and given task-specific dies should the reloader wish to apply, for example, a very precise crimp in…

While it’s a timeworn slogan, there’s no denying that for many shooters the Winchester Model 70 is, has been and always will be “the Rifleman’s Rifle.” Introduced in 1937, it brought important improvements to the company’s Model 54 bolt action that endeared it to shooters of the day, who were only beginning to embrace the sporting bolt-action repeater over the lever action and other designs. With the Model 70 came a single-stage trigger, hinged floorplate, more graceful sporting-type stock, horizontally pivoting three-position safety and other features. Its action was incredibly strong, able to handle cartridges up to .375 H&H right out of the gate, and for nearly a century it has been one of America’s premier bolt actions. Despite all this, in recent years the Model 70 has become almost…

Roy Weatherby was a visionary in the firearms industry. From his early experiments with ultra-velocity rounds to the development of his supremely safe action and his early adoption of polymer stocks, Weatherby was always at the leading edge of hunting rifle innovation. He was also a brilliant marketer. I still recall the images of a tree blown into so many matchsticks by a single .300 Wby. round and Roy palling around with famous actors like John Wayne and Roy Rogers. Dressed in fancy Monte Carlo stocks and chambered for hard-hitting magnums, the Weatherby Mark V became the “it” hunting rifle of the mid-20th century. But all that fancy walnut came at a price, one many hunters simply couldn’t afford. Roy Weatherby understood the need for a workingman’s Mark V, and…

The latest addition to Savage’s Backcountry Xtreme line of bolt-action rifles is the new 110 Timberline. Part precision gun, part mountain rifle, the Timberline is built to offer a high level of durability for tough hunting conditions while producing the same target gun accuracy that has made Savage 110 rifles popular among hunters. “Our team at Savage is enjoying developing the new models in the Backcountry Xtreme Series,” said Jessica Treglia, senior brand manager at Savage Arms. “We can test new limits in hunting and grow our product line to build the rifles our customers want—like this new 110 Timberline. This is a versatile hunting rifle that delivers outstanding long-range accuracy, and it can stand up to anything.” At the heart of the Timberline is Savage’s 110 push-feed action that…