Hey Schwuli,
Can't decide if the non-issue of the front ring chafes your German aesthete and need to massively overbuild things or If you don't like WRs. If you want to shit on this rifle why don't you start your own thread? When you do that please be sure to show pics of the "butchered" WR front ring in comparison to .318s by other makers--sounds like it would require an extra machining step(s), which wouldn't make it any cheaper. Of course would still like to see pics or written documentation of WR 318s which have failed in the manner you suggest their design makes them prone to doing. Given the enormous popularity of the chambering and the action there should be a surfeit of stories for you to draw on; I, unlike you, do require "statistics."

Bill Shear