I don't post here much but read with interest the article by the PH and the commentary by those in the forum. I started to question what kind of piece of junk I bought back in the 80's. I typically don't beat on my rifles too badly and am a bit anal about cleanliness. Today I decided to check the function of my M700 to see if I could replicate some of the failures some others were experiencing in the feeding/functioning department. In short, I tried to beat on it a bit. The test mule in question is a M700 BDL. The serial number on the receiver is B6764XXX and the barrel stamp is "H". I think the date of manufacture is about 1987. I bought the rifle new and the round count through the barrel is approximately 1850 as best I can tell when reviewing handloading data from the past. Caliber is .300 Win mag. The rifle is box stock with the exception of a little bit of trigger tweaking. It is currently wearing it's 3rd stock (factory BDL), on it's 2nd scope ( shook the innards loose on the 1st Redfield) and it's 2nd bottom metal (broke the original floor plate tab). After a practice session of about 20 cycles of manipulating the bolt as fast as I could, 2 rounds were used to check functioning; an empty case was chambered and a dummy round inserted into the magazine. The COL of the dummy round was 3.542 as indicated by the dial caliper. With rifle at waist level and hand on bolt, I operated the action as fast as I could with the empty in the chamber and dummy in the magazine and here is what I found:

In 20 hard and fast cycles all empty brass in the chamber ejected without a hitch and the dummy round chambered flawlessly.

When working the bolt hard and fast with the dummy round chambered after the 1st empty round was ejected, 6 failures were experienced.

Failures included 3 rounds that were re chambered,2 that stove piped and 1 that actually jammed on the face of the receiver.

Condition of the fired case was pretty good. Rim showed a little roughness but the body and belt were in pretty good shape. Condition of the dummy round was a bit worst. Bullet nose deformed from hitting the receiver. The body and rim showed considerable more wear than the empty. ????

Total cycles of the bolt with the empty/dummy was a bit over 40.

After removing the bolt, very small pieces of brass were noticed on the bolt face.

I know the sample size is way too small to be definitive but is interesting to me none the less. I have a late manufacture M700 short action and a New Haven M70 Featherweight CFR in 6.5x55 I'm going to look at next. Don't have any Ruger 77's to try........yet!