Thanks for sharing your journey and acquisition with us - great photos, too! You mentioned that some of the weight difference was due to the actions themselves; is the 7x57 on Winchester's short (really it's an intermediate) action? Second, if not, and it's a full-length action, why didn't you just have the .280 rebarrelled?
The actions seem to be the same length - long. However, other action dimensions may have changed somewhat over the ten years or so that separated the two rifles.
Re-barreling the .280 to 7x57 was a viable option. To be honest, though, I sort of hate to mess with these older rifles, altering them to fit my passing whims when so many others would prefer to have them in their original state. I guess I feel somehow more comfortable passing that .280 Featherweight on to someone who will love it as it was made, rather than chopping it up and making it into something that it was not. From time to time we all come across older rifles that were dramatically altered by their owners with recoil pads, garish stock carvings, inlays, muzzle breaks and just about anything else one can think of. In so many of those cases the original flavor of the gun was forever lost. I try hard not to commit such flagrant offenses. While re-barreling may not quite be in that category, I can�t help but think it may be close. If I wanted a 7x57 in CRF, I believe I�d have been much better served � and so would the rifle world - by re-barreling a brand new FN Winchester M70 Featherweight and not an older, somewhat vintage, somewhat rare-chambering rifle. Re-barrel the old junkers. Re-barrel new rifles. But leave the hard-to-find vintage shooters pretty much alone. We are, after all, merely temporary custodians of these older rifles. At least that�s my view of the subject. Others are certainly free to do whatever they want.
Does that make any sense?
