Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Express Rifles and Big Bores Only The great 458 Winchester. Everyone should own one at least once

Thanks! I'm not going to lie when I say I'm really excited about the M70. It has such a great heft & feel about it. This purchase all started when a hunting buddy kept talking about taking a trip to Africa and that dream collided with my fondness for classic calibers. So I asked a question about the versatility of using more powerful rifles like this on thinner skinned game. One recommendation that came from some more experienced hunters was that I would get a lot of mileage out of a 30-06 / 375 H&H combo if I ever decided to go hunting for plains game. So my Sako 85 Hunter & the newly-acquired Winchester M70 now cover that possible scenario:



I'm really looking forward to taking the M70 out to the range tomorrow & see how she shoots. I took the Sako out last Sunday & was really pleased when my last three shots off a bean bag at 100 yards made a single hole. For my terrible eyes, that's about as good as it ever gets (i.e. don't ask me to repeat this feat ).




The only "problem" that the first thread created was it piqued my interest in some of the larger .4** size calibers and that lead to a second thread that wound up with me surprisingly deciding to build a 458 WM. I don't think I properly appreciated the versatility of this particular round until some of its enthusiasts started recommending it. For me, having puzzles to think about is always a good thing. I generally take any project I decide to do and then start by making it as involved, time-consuming & over-complicated as I possibly can . I don't do anything quickly. One of my last little fun side projects was cobbling together a stereo system and I took almost a year to get that task accomplished.

So trying to make this new build look special is going to be a fun challenge. One of the first hurdles is that the majority of the barrel bands & sights I've seen are either blued or in the white. Stainless is not as common. The one that is at Midway USA below, has an inside diameter of .560. As you pointed out in my previous thread, you need ~0.125" of barrel around the bore, so .560 - (2 * 0.125) = .310". It appears that this front sight was designed to go around .308 caliber barrels with a .560 muzzle. To mount it on a .458 muzzle, either the tip of the barrel or the inside of the sight would have to be filed down considerably to the point of possibly being unsafe or unusable. Locating the exact ones that are used on the .416 Ruger Guide Gun might be more appropriate and a fun scavenger hunt to try to accomplish. I'll keep you posted if I can make some progress.