Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats Elegant Black

Here is a subdued and understated project...



Pushfeed Model 70 short action, Pac-Nor 1-8 twist, 23" in featherweight contour, chambered in .260 Remington.



McMillan stock, in a pattern made for Hill Country Rifles. The 23" barrel is certainly longer than a 260 Remington needs, but the stock has a long forend, and a shorter barrel would have looked out of proportion.
The stock is currently the standard 13.5" LOP, but I built this rifle hoping that my wife would like it, so the stock may get shortened quite a bit.



Leupold 6x-42mm scope in double dovetail rings.



Williams one-piece Oberndorf floorplate assembly. Both the floorplate and action are just rough fit at this point. I just wanted to see how the parts looked put together.

Total weight of the rig is a smidge over 8#, with very nice balance.

Redneck on this site did the barrel job and the whole project took 6 weeks. Part of the time was spent waiting for it to get warm enough to do the bluing, or it would have been back sooner. The nice thing was that we were in PM contact the whole time working out details so that we were in sync on the work being done and the cost. That was a pleasant departure from waiting months and months without a word from the gunsmith on progress, only to have it arrive with either different configuration or cost to what you had expected.

That's a really nice rifle. Good Job.

Great looking rifle. Still waiting on the lefty 257 but it should be about 4 more weeks. The coating is the reason for the delay. Hope the Africa planning is going well.

Plans for Africa are coming together. They better; I will spend two months out-of-country between now and my departure date at the end of June.

This little .260 does not get to come, however. This 375 H&H will do the heavy lifting...


and be supported by a 30-06 that I have shown many times...



What can I say--when push comes to shove, Leupold, McMillan, and Winchester get the nod from me.

Nice rifles, you are in good shape for your hunt.

All three of those rifles look great. Very nice.

On a side note, you should be getting mail any time now.

Utah-

Sweet looking rigs.

Every consider one of the tan colored pads on the elegant black?

SKane--

That is a color combination I have never done, although I currently have a red pad on a black stock. I had figured that I would paint it brown to create a look that matches the 30-06 shown in the photo.

Very nice rifle! That stock shape caught my eye. Is it available for straight purchase, and how does it compare to the compact?

Rick--
I believe the stock is only available through Hill Country. I picked it up off the web from HCR, so they might have more. I have never seen it on the McMillan website. It was inlet for Blackburn bottom metal, but it was no trick to make the changes needed to fit the Williams. It is notably different from the compact. The compact has a smaller cross-section foreend, and a much rounder grip cross-section. The HCR has a tall narrow cross section through the grip. The HCR also has more cosmetic detailing, like the taper just forward of the floorplate assembly. My understanding is that this is the HCR Classic stock that was designed by J. Earl Bridges, who apprenticed under Jerry Fisher and may have worked with/for D'Arcy Echols. There are certainly more than passing similarities between this stock and the Echols Legend that I have. D'Arcy once told me that Earl wanted to build stocks that "looked like they were going 60, even when they were standing still."

Well done! Nice choice in the .260, BTW. I'm a 6.5 fan as well.

Thanks Steve. I've got an Echols stock ordered for my M70 358 Norma. Looking forward to it!

Veryu nice. I love that stock. I am in the middle of a build using the exact same stock. Mine will be on a stainless M70 Classic action with Blackburn bottom metal. The only hold up now is my barrel from Pac Nor.

Brent

Nice! Wish my wife if tolerated those kind of toys, let alone liked them.

i've got an elegant black rifle (well, it's black, anyhow) cooking right now: bedding is curing on a winchester 670a push feed LA in .30-'06 nestled into a mcmillan featherlight stock. had to do a good bit of sanding to get the forend opened for the sporter weight barrel. i really wish i'd discovered the pushfeed winchesters years ago. ...