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It never ceases to amaze me of the utter fealty paid to the Model 98 Mauser by members of these forums. It's almost like an act of worship. Personally I like American rifles both in style and manufacture. The Model 70 Winchester action in my mind being the equal of any on earth. I have several made on Mauser actions and a custom 375H&H on a Model 70 Classic. I also have one ,what I consider to be an original Mauser Commercial Single Square Bridge, since it is marked 318 Westley Richards Accellerated Express on the left side. I assume it's a standard action. It is now a 375H&H but the action was obviously modified by Westley Richards for some reason. The front ring is partially machined away from center top to right rail. They seem to have done this for some reason on several pictures of WR's I have seen. I understand the 'U' being ground in top to allow for some clip loading but not this particular procedure. Could it be that WR was not pleased with the excellant Mauser action as built by the hallowed company so changed it.

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The WR cut the front receiver ring in the fashion you described to allow more clearance to load the 3.6" long.375 H&H cartridges and to be able to extract loaded bullets from the magazine. This was not done to correct a design flaw in the original Mauser 98 action but to use it for a purpose for which it was not designed. As for WR design credentials, their .425 WS uses a shortened .404 Jeffrey case. In order to save machining costs in modifying bolt face and extractor to handle the .404 case's rim (.544"), WS elected to rebate the .425's rim (to standard 8X57 rim size(.472). This makes the cartridge a liability for dangerous game hunting,the cartridges main purpose, as the bolt may fail to pick up a cartridge from the mag.
The model 70 Winchester was built under licence from Mauser for which they paid (before WWII).
The Model 70 was cheaper to produce with it's 3 piece bottom metal and other cuts in machining costs. There is no hunting rifle action today,that is superior or equal to the Mauser 98. If you doubt what I say contact Dorleac, H&H, Rigby, WR,G&H, Purdy,Prechtl,and every single maker of the finest rifles made today,117yrs after the design of the action this forum is named after.

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