Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Model 70 Safety Issue/flaw? Rifle would not fire during Antelope hunt...

Blacktailer, next time that I chat with Keith (likely in Jan at the shows), I'll politely ask about the rifle that Nicole used. I'm fairly certain that he's on the road until late November now anyways...

. When I get back, I'll check the travel on all of my Model 70 bolts for lift distance. The 1/2" that I mentioned is the distance between the bottom of the wood groove (vertex in the parabola, if you are into math) and the bolt shaft when fully lifted up with the safety on.

BWalker, what's this distance on your rifles averaging? What do you consider normal?

I would clean the bolt, firing pin assembly, trigger assembly, and chamber.

Crawling around in often sandy pronghorn country is when my rifles get the dirtiest. Odds are you have picked up some gunk somewhere in the rifle.

My bolts dont rotate at all in the rear most postion. There is some slop inherent in the bolt assembly, but not even close to a half inch. Maybe a 1/16". This applys to the three model 70's I have on hand.

Never heard of such a problem.

Surprised you stumbled on the only gun Smith who has any experience with this flaw.

Did you watch what he did?

As someone said, the model 70 has one of the easiest bolts to disassemble. Very easy to maintain.

In the incident involving Nicky Atcheson the story I heard is that since they were following a buff that she had wounded she had the safety in the middle position and somewhere during the follow up the bolt was slightly lifted causing the FTF. It was not in the rear most bolt lock position.

Sorry about your mishap. You have been given some excellent ideas to address the failure. Hope you get it sorted out

The irony is many people criticize the new Winchester m70 MicroTrigger ( and it works fine), and tout the older m70 trigger as "superior" and "bullet proof". Mechanical devices can and do fail, as the OP has found out.

Good luck for a simple, quick resolution to the glitch. Life happens.

The old trigger is a sound design, but the execution sucked.

All, thank you for your feedback and insight. Good lessons and info learnt and I had some good offline conversation with fellow members.

In sum: the issue has been resolved regardless of the root cause which I understand was likely a combination of Winchester factory and other items mentioned here. I trust the rifle maker who graciously fixed the issue and who also properly cleaned the rifle before giving it back to me. I have since resighted-in the rifle and the rifle now functions as intended and I cannot repeat the issue.

Fantastic.


Jerry