If you work the bolt in and out of a push feed rifle without going completely into battery, you might be able to have the unfired cartridge fall out of the rifle if you hold it upside down.
It’s possible, at least for some rifles, but you really have to work at it.
The reason Winchester’s Model 70 went from controlled to push and back again, and some new “Mausers” from Mauser-Werke are push feed, is that it allows a wider range of cartridges to feed reliably from the same action. When you design *only* has to feed 8×57 or .30-06 or whatever, controlled feed is reasonable. And a good smith can make quite a few other cartridges work. But for the market, engineering and reliability testing have to be done for every cartridge offered, and that costs money, which means all the guys buying .308s have to pay for the two 6mm WSSM cranks, or whatever.
Though some companies *do* vary the price according to caliber, they do it for both types of feed. Obviously if you’re shooting .458 Win Mag, you have plenty of disposable income and aren’t going to object to paying more for a rifle…
This article is filed under the category(s) Firearms,Guns and was published February 10th, 2021 by Herschel Smith.
If you're interested in what else the The Captain's Journal has to say, you might try thumbing through the archives and visiting the main index, or; perhaps you would like to learn more about TCJ.
On February 12, 2021 at 1:49 am, TRX said:
If you work the bolt in and out of a push feed rifle without going completely into battery, you might be able to have the unfired cartridge fall out of the rifle if you hold it upside down.
It’s possible, at least for some rifles, but you really have to work at it.
The reason Winchester’s Model 70 went from controlled to push and back again, and some new “Mausers” from Mauser-Werke are push feed, is that it allows a wider range of cartridges to feed reliably from the same action. When you design *only* has to feed 8×57 or .30-06 or whatever, controlled feed is reasonable. And a good smith can make quite a few other cartridges work. But for the market, engineering and reliability testing have to be done for every cartridge offered, and that costs money, which means all the guys buying .308s have to pay for the two 6mm WSSM cranks, or whatever.
Though some companies *do* vary the price according to caliber, they do it for both types of feed. Obviously if you’re shooting .458 Win Mag, you have plenty of disposable income and aren’t going to object to paying more for a rifle…