In terms of poor bedding jobs having been done on them, Model 70's top the heap by a landslide. "
What is to bed on a pre64 M70 Fwt?
The barrel of mine was fully floated and all it needed was a little Arkansas stone on the trigger and it was sub MOA with factory ammo.
Then it may (or may not) have been free-floated by somebody else already.
The first Featherweights (which were chambered only in .308 Winchester during the first three years) were "bedded" with what Winchester termed a "free-floating barrel," though some gun writers of the era called a "full-floating" barrel when they reviewed the new rifle. Some reported 5-shot groups of up to 2-3 inches at 100 yards.
This was because Winchester's definition of "free-floating" at the time was the barrel BARELY clearing the forend. Consequently in many Featherweights the barrel could vibrate enough to touch the forend when fired, which results in "fliers." This
is why truly free-floated barrels do NOT have such minimal clearance.
I was lucky enough to purchase an original .308 Featherweight a few years ago which had NOT been "bedded," and it shot very much like the reviewers in the 1950s reported--very erratically. This was because a dollar bill (though not a doubled-over dollar bill) would barely fit between the barrel and forend. It was easy to compress the tip of the forend against the barrel by grabbing it with my right hand--which is one of my basic tests for whether a barrel has been truly free-floated.
Which is why I put a bread-bag "spacer" under the front of the receiver, which resulted in NOT being able to grab the tip of the forend and press it against the barrel. This resulted in the rifle shooting most ammo, whether handloads or factory loads, into an inch or less at 100 yards.
Have seen this in more than one "original condition" pre-'64 Featherweight. My latest is a .270, purchased about 6 weeks ago, which left the factory the first year Featherweights were chambered in .270. It had the same sort of "bedding" system--which is why I installed a bread-bag shim even before range-testing the rifle. Haven't had a chance to do so yet, but wasn't going to waste ammo with the original bedding.
This is also why Winchester REALLY free-floated the barrels on the Model 70s introduced in 1964, which caused many gun writers and Winchester fans to whine a LOT. Yet the new rifles consistently shot very accurately, as reviews of that area stated--even when the reviewer bitched about the larger gap between the barrel and forend.
You may have gotten lucky and acquired a rifle where the forend warped AWAY from the forend as the stock aged, or somebody may have sanded the forend channel larger before you acquired the rifle. But after having owned several original-condition pre-'64 Featherweights, can confidently state that your rifle is unusual.
Have written about all this in a chapter of THE BIG BOOK OF GUN GACK III.
