Remington of Old

[Joel]

Nothing wrong with the trigger itself. Just the lack of foresight that went into safety. If they'd only have incorporated a trigger block as well as the sear block into the safety. We'd never hear about gummed up triggers or old grease, as that would mitigate the vast majority of problems with it.

Still not as good as a positive striker block, but it would've made a big difference.

I picked up a classic 700 a little while back, which doesn't have a very nice trigger pull. I'm not a big trigger snob, but it's heavy and creepy. I'll adjust it a little nicer. Because it has the Walker trigger, I'll probably remove the bar that's the little bolt lock in the safety.

Is it fair to say that the ingress of any dirt or when its cold out, moisture, can either jam up the trigger, or make it fire when unintended, and that it isn't really ever drop safe?

In pretty much any iteration of a Remington 700 trigger because of the connector?

 

[bearhunter]

There's not a lot wrong, even with new production Model 700 Remington rifles, other than they are now being compared to rifles which were once too expensive to produce in North America and be able to make a profit.

The design proved itself many times over, both in the field hunting as well as on match ranges.

It's not perfect, never was intended to be either. I much prefer the original Walker trigger to their present offering.

As far as "one rifle at a time" goes, Remington wasn't the only manufacturer producing firearms in this manner, both in North America and all over the world.

I was lucky enough to get a tour of the Ilion plant back in the early seventies. It opened up my eyes a lot.

Remington, like many other companies, started building "component" style rifles, where some parts were "contracted" to be made, from outside sources. This made standardization easier, fitting faster/cheaper, and the list goes on.

I love the idea of a "skilled craftsman" hand building and tuning firearms, but that really hasn't been the case in most factories since the 1880s.

Mostly it's been "hand assembly of components" either contracted or in house manufactured to fit a "standard."

When it comes to purchasing an off the shelf firearm, and push comes to shove, I would opt for the CNC manufactured, component rifle, maybe hand assembled/fitted, over an all hand assembled/fitted firearm.

Modern production methods are what made rifles such as Savage, Ruger, Tikka, Bergara, etc what they are today.

It wasn't that long ago when you couldn't give away a Savage bolt action rifle, because accuracy was so hit and miss. Same for Rugers and Tikkas.

Many will scream heresy at those words, but it's true.

Savage didn't get back into the spotlight until it tore down its old system, full of antiquated tooling, built a new facility, and filled it with CNC equipment. Ruger went through a similar transformation, and now Remington and Winchester are following along.

It didn't happen, until offshore interests stepped up to the plate to save the brand name, by retooling the machinery necessary to refine the old design, make them even more precise, but much cheaper per unit to produce, and provide a profit for their investors.

Nothing wrong with new Remingtons, Marlins, Winchesters IMHO.

They've been modernized, and it doesn't appeal to many, so they've moved onto offshore manufactured firearms, which are very good and in some cases better. However, the present batches of firearms I see coming from offshore as well as North American factories are as good or better than ever.

This is just IMHO, of course.

CNC machining allows the new producers to manufacture their products with much more precision, as well as include features at minimal cost, which used to be expensive options.

Older isn't always better.

Nostalgia is a great sentiment, but often, that's all it is.

If a CNC machine is set up properly, and well maintained, it will produce thousands of identical components, cheaply, won't have bad days, and can be easily fitted, even by bubba.

 

[Bill Leeper]

The Remington trigger can screw up when dirt or moisture get into it, just like every other trigger. It is just as drop safe as any other. In fact. it will handle the "drop test" better than the original Model 70 will. The "firing on safety release" was primarily the result of poor QC. Parts were dimensionally out of spec. It was not the fault of the trigger design. There are triggers being made today which utilize a sear connector, but they don't call it a sear connector. The trigger could easily have been made differently and could have been a better trigger, but all the bad press about the design was BS.