Time to go long on CRF rifles?

[tward1604]

I tell you what, when I win the Powerball tonight I'll start up a firearm company making crf actions in all sizes. Doubles too.

 

[Ontario Hunter]

I tell you what, when I win the Powerball tonight I'll start up a firearm company making crf actions in all sizes. Doubles too.

Why not? Seems you're in the habit of throwing your money away if you buy lottery tickets. Just kidding.

I think modern CNC technology holds out the potential for cost cutting in manufacturing CRF actions ... but same cost savings are keeping down the price of making push feed rifles. I look at all the extra machining and parts that go into making a "quality" CRF rifle: claw extractor and striker safety for example. As long as functionality is basically the same, it is hard to sell the extra expense. I believe CRF provides some small potential advantage when hunting dangerous game, but that market is relatively miniscule.

 

[Pilgrim]

It was the norm for this hunter for more than fifty years. Most working stiffs with a family to look after don't have the time or money to play games at the range. I hunted hard but out of respect for my very respectful and never complaining dearly departed wife. I was careful to avoid wasting money on fancy or extra guns or shooting $$$ through paper at the range during the off season. Didn't want to give her a reason to complain.

I would never buy a new rifle ... or a new vehicle. Too wasteful.

Much respect. This is me, a middle aged family man with too many hobbies, with time and money flying many directions. I love hunting, I love guns, and I love plenty of other things just as much if not more. I'm probably the exception on this forum as I dont own a single bolt action. As a kid I hunted with my dad's lever .30-30 for a few years, then "upgraded" to his piece of shite remington 742 for a few more, then finally traded my way into my own (used) browning BAR that I still use today. I have a number of rifles, none of them are bolt action. I've got nothing against bolt guns, my wife and kids have plenty of them that I've bought. I love bolt actions, I just love lever actions more.
So, for me, the importance of CRF is near zero as it is well beyond the point of diminishing return for what I do as the average American hunter. I can live with the one in 1000 fail to feed in a PF that would have been prevented by a CRF (yes, a made up statistic, anybody have any real numbers on this?). I'm also not the guy standing 30 feet from a charging buffalo, so for the guys who do that style of hunting I can see why CRF might be important, but it seems the double rifle would be a better choice. For almost all of us hunters, there really is no justification to demand CRF, and the market reflects that.

 

[rookhawk]

I keep hearing cost as the main reason CRF actions are being phased out. How much more can a ten dollar piece of spring steel and an extra cut to accommodate it cost? Same with a magnum action, does an extra 2.2 inches increase cost significantly?

The wholesale cost to make a winchester model 70 type side safety at scale is $125 alone. (Retail $200) So in order to build a modern mauser action CRF rifle, the cost of the safety exceeds the manufacturing cost of an entire Rem 700 push feed action.

As to what it costs to make a magnum action, the answer is the same as what does it cost to make a $1 chinese part? The answer is a million dollars for the first one and twelve cents for the next 100,000. To set up the tooling to make magnum mausers is very expensive, and to do one exceptionally well brings the price way, way up. Prechtl / Reimer Johannsen charge $5000 retail in the white for a magnum square bridge action, with bottom metal, with safety and trigger. Assuming they are doubling their money (doubt it) it means they have manufacturing costs of $2500 per action in the white. Perfect tolerances and small production numbers equal vastly higher costs.

Do a search for bolt action rifles over $50,000, you will not find one that is on a push feed action. They are always on mauser action CRF designs, often in custom actions that are precisely the length of the cartridge whether micro-kurz, kurz, standard, long, magnum, or super magnum.

 

[baxterb]

Echols designed and is building his new LX-1 action for his Legend and Classic rifles. A magnificent ‘new’ CRF. He is fully in the game. But they ain’t cheap…

 

[Aaron N]

The wholesale cost to make a winchester model 70 type side safety at scale is $125 alone. (Retail $200) So in order to build a modern mauser action CRF rifle, the cost of the safety exceeds the manufacturing cost of an entire Rem 700 push feed action.

As to what it costs to make a magnum action, the answer is the same as what does it cost to make a $1 chinese part? The answer is a million dollars for the first one and twelve cents for the next 100,000. To set up the tooling to make magnum mausers is very expensive, and to do one exceptionally well brings the price way, way up. Prechtl / Reimer Johannsen charge $5000 retail in the white for a magnum square bridge action, with bottom metal, with safety and trigger. Assuming they are doubling their money (doubt it) it means they have manufacturing costs of $2500 per action in the white. Perfect tolerances and small production numbers equal vastly higher costs.

Do a search for bolt action rifles over $50,000, you will not find one that is on a push feed action. They are always on mauser action CRF designs, often in custom actions that are precisely the length of the cartridge whether micro-kurz, kurz, standard, long, magnum, or super magnum.

I agree with everything you’re saying, and your basically proving my other point that the broader market really doesn’t give a rats ass about CRF (Personally I’m a fan).

A few years ago you could buy a new CZ550 action for $600, let’s say that $1000 in todays dollars if they were still being made. If the market for CRF was there, I bet someone could pump out a better functioning action for double that (weren’t Montana actions reasonable?).

Something tells me with the 5k actions, you’re paying a premium on exclusivity

 

[rookhawk]

I agree with everything you’re saying, and your basically proving my other point that the broader market really doesn’t give a rats ass about CRF (Personally I’m a fan).

A few years ago you could buy a new CZ550 action for $600, let’s say that $1000 in todays dollars if they were still being made. If the market for CRF was there, I bet someone could pump out a better functioning action for double that (weren’t Montana actions reasonable?).

Something tells me with the 5k actions, you’re paying a premium on exclusivity

The CZ is the bottom floor for magnum CRF actions. It's not great fit, finish, or tolerances. They are safe and functional. The amount of work going into a CZ action compared to a true mauser magnum action is vastly different. There is a $1000 in blueprinting, lapping the raceways, and other tuning that occurs on these best-quality mauser actions in the white that already exists when you buy them. When you buy a CZ action that is customized by Wayne or others, he puts that $1000 in time into the action and tacks it onto the price of his custom work.

If I was going to spend reasonable money on a custom rifle, I'd want to make darned sure it was an actual Paul Mauser blueprint that was used to make the action. If I ever need a replacement part, there are known specs available and there may be other sources for the same part that will work with minor fitting. On the other hand, a kinda-sorta mauser CRF is proprietary and single-source for parts as is the case with CZ.

So in conclusion, my opinion is that the CZ is a lousy basis for a $10k+ custom gun, but it is a wonderful bargain for a <$2000 gun that needs $500 in tuning to become 100% reliable for DG.

 

[mdwest]

Something tells me with the 5k actions, you’re paying a premium on exclusivity

Some of it is likely exclusivity... but a good bit of it is simple supply v demand..

Assume it costs $200K from soup to nuts to get an action into production (design and engineering, T&E, tooling, etc..etc..)...

if Im going to sell 5000 push feed actions this year.. I can take that $200K in sunk costs and spread it out over 5000, 10,000, or even 20,000 actions that I anticipate selling over the next few years...

if Im only going to sell 1000 CRF actions a year.. its going to take me A LOT longer to recoup my initial investment.. or.. Im going to have to increase my sales price significantly to get back my costs (and also reduce my overall long term market risk exposure)..

Remington just sold off (at auction) all of its machinery at its NY plant a few weeks ago.. from the fuzzy math I did in my head, its going to cost them well over $1M (Id guess closer to $2M) to replace everything at their new manufacturing facility... and they only recouped a very small piece of that investment cost by selling off their older machinery (my understanding was they needed to update a lot of their tooling, and it was going to cost a small fortune to move it all.. so it made better financial sense just to sell off what they had and do a complete overhaul of their manufacturing capability at the time of the move...)....

But.. theyre going to need to get that $2M back... and Im sure their investors dont want to wait 20 years to start making money..

Id guess we're about to see a price increase on remington firearms over the next few years..

 

[Aaron N]

The CZ is the bottom floor for magnum CRF actions. It's not great fit, finish, or tolerances. They are safe and functional. The amount of work going into a CZ action compared to a true mauser magnum action is vastly different. There is a $1000 in blueprinting, lapping the raceways, and other tuning that occurs on these best-quality mauser actions in the white that already exists when you buy them. When you buy a CZ action that is customized by Wayne or others, he puts that $1000 in time into the action and tacks it onto the price of his custom work.

If I was going to spend reasonable money on a custom rifle, I'd want to make darned sure it was an actual Paul Mauser blueprint that was used to make the action. If I ever need a replacement part, there are known specs available and there may be other sources for the same part that will work with minor fitting. On the other hand, a kinda-sorta mauser CRF is proprietary and single-source for parts as is the case with CZ.

So in conclusion, my opinion is that the CZ is a lousy basis for a $10k+ custom gun, but it is a wonderful bargain for a <$2000 gun that needs $500 in tuning to become 100% reliable for DG.

Once again 100% agree. So for 2k, a reliable action should be able to be produced and available to the working class if the market dictates a demand for it.

If you’re spending >10k on a custom build, by all means get the best.

 

[Aaron N]

Some of it is likely exclusivity... but a good bit of it is simple supply v demand..

Assume it costs $200K from soup to nuts to get an action into production (design and engineering, T&E, tooling, etc..etc..)...

if Im going to sell 5000 push feed actions this year.. I can take that $200K in sunk costs and spread it out over 5000, 10,000, or even 20,000 actions that I anticipate selling over the next few years...

if Im only going to sell 1000 CRF actions a year.. its going to take me A LOT longer to recoup my initial investment.. or.. Im going to have to increase my sales price significantly to get back my costs (and also reduce my overall long term market risk exposure)..

Remington just sold off (at auction) all of its machinery at its NY plant a few weeks ago.. from the fuzzy math I did in my head, its going to cost them well over $1M (Id guess closer to $2M) to replace everything at their new manufacturing facility... and they only recouped a very small piece of that investment cost by selling off their older machinery (my understanding was they needed to update a lot of their tooling, and it was going to cost a small fortune to move it all.. so it made better financial sense just to sell off what they had and do a complete overhaul of their manufacturing capability at the time of the move...)....

But.. theyre going to need to get that $2M back... and Im sure their investors dont want to wait 20 years to start making money..

Id guess we're about to see a price increase on remington firearms over the next few years..

The supply will always lag demand ( unless the marketing team has something to do with it), so that brings us back to my point of average hunters not caring. And to be honest, I don’t even have a valid argument for the average whitetail hunter as to why they should switch.

 

[mdwest]

And to be honest, I don’t even have a valid argument for the average whitetail hunter as to why they should switch.

While all of my "africa" rifles are CRF... I'll be the first to admit that most of my NA rifles are push feed, to include my primary whitetail rifle (a 308) and my primary "out west" elk rifle (a 300 H&H)..

and Im likely much more particular about make/model/caliber/etc than most US hunters..

 

[khesser]

Once again 100% agree. So for 2k, a reliable action should be able to be produced and available to the working class if the market dictates a demand for it.

If you’re spending >10k on a custom build, by all means get the best.

It’s already available for $1599. It’s extremely reliable and robust. They also OEM this action for some manufacturers. Now you’ll probably end up paying around $5000 for a custom rifle built using this action. My rifle I use for bear hunting was built with with a Mausingfield.

Mausingfield Bolt Action

americanrifle.odoo.com

 

[MS 9x56]

I never really thought about PF versus CRF but in going through my gun cabinet all but one of my center fire rifles are CRF. Maybe because I gravitate towards the old classics. The only PF I own is a Ruger American 30-06 that I won on a raffle ticket. Since I don’t roll around on the ground while working the bolt I have never honestly noticed a functional difference. I think the claw extractor is definitely the better extractor but then again I don’t hot rod my reloads so have never had an issue with extraction either. I guess it just comes down to the guns I like to hunt with just all come with CRF and I am OK with that.

 

[Aaron N]

It’s already available for $1599. It’s extremely reliable and robust. They also OEM this action for some manufacturers. Now you’ll probably end up paying around $5000 for a custom rifle built using this action. My rifle I use for bear hunting was built with with a Mausingfield.

Mausingfield Bolt Action

americanrifle.odoo.com

Ugly thing, iddn't it?

 

[khesser]

Depends on configuration I guess. If you don’t like a top rail they have rings that attach directly to the action that cleans it up. I don’t find it ugly on my rifle but I built it for durability for hunting coastal Alaska.

 

[Ontario Hunter]

Depends on configuration I guess. If you don’t like a top rail they have rings that attach directly to the action that cleans it up. I don’t find it ugly on my rifle but I built it for durability for hunting coastal Alaska.

I definitely do not care for the Star Trek bolt knob! Ugh! Leave the space age acutrements to push feed crowd wearing skinny pants and pointy shoes. Why would they even want a claw extractor? Those don't work with twisty carved bolts. The marketing angle totally escapes me.

 

[khesser]

I definitely do not care for the Star Trek bolt knob! Ugh! Leave the space age acutrements to push feed crowd wearing skinny pants and pointy shoes. Why would they even want a claw extractor? Those don't work with twisty carved bolts. The marketing angle totally escapes me.

Bolt knob can be changed out and they have different options. Mauser Claw style extractor is just a large extractor that has the added benefit of not only being CRF but you can single feed rounds if needed. You don’t have to load the rounds in a mag to get them to chamber. Not sure about twisty bolts but the bolt used is not twisty and functions fine.

 

[Ontario Hunter]

Bolt knob can be changed out and they have different options. Mauser Claw style extractor is just a large extractor that has the added benefit of not only being CRF but you can single feed rounds if needed. You don’t have to load the rounds in a mag to get them to chamber. Not sure about twisty bolts but the bolt used is not twisty and functions fine.

The point being the millennial crowd are more interested in fluted bolts than claw extractors. Yes, I know the function of CRF extractors. As I said, CRF may provide some small measure of added safety for dangerous game rifles. Very small. If client and PH cannot put down a charging buffalo before client has expended four (or five) rounds from his fully loaded rifle, it's doubtful dropping an extra one in the chamber of an empty rifle will make much difference. A hunter who can't hit water falling out of a boat probably has no business hunting dangerous game. Would be better if he got his thrills on a roller coaster ride.

 

[CoElkHunter]

It was the norm for this hunter for more than fifty years. Most working stiffs with a family to look after don't have the time or money to play games at the range. I hunted hard but out of respect for my very respectful and never complaining dearly departed wife. I was careful to avoid wasting money on fancy or extra guns or shooting $$$ through paper at the range during the off season. Didn't want to give her a reason to complain.

I would never buy a new rifle ... or a new vehicle. Too wasteful.

Although, SOMETIMES it's more cost efficient to buy something like a rifle or vehicle new/like new when looking at the costs to have a gunsmith build one (rifle) or extensive repairs to a used vehicle? For those that have the knowledge, tools and TIME to do those things, more power to them. In the case of a rifle, it would be apples to oranges though. I would most likely buy a Ruger Hawkeye or Winchester 70 CRF NEW rifle before spending three times the cost having a gunsmith build something similar. I went to Buffalo Bore bullets website a few weeks ago looking around. When I went to their Ruger .375 ammo page, BB owner Tim Sundles has a photo there of two .375 Ruger Hawkeye Guide Guns. He states that when Ruger came out with this model in 2013, he bought two of them, stating it cost him several thousands of dollars to have a similar rifle built thirty years earlier. Don't get me wrong, they are not in the same league as the beautiful custom rifles I've seen photos of and read about here on AH. But, they seem fairly well built and I can afford them.

 

[HankBuck]

The Ruger M77 Hawkeye CRF actioned rifles are still available here. I know TWO of the many people I have hunted with here over the years that hunt with Ruger CRFs. The rest hunt with PF rifles and wouldn’t know a CRF action if it bit them in the arse. They wouldn’t care anyway because they continue to hunt and kill animals with the rifles they’ve used for decades. I too choose my Browning PF due to it’s lighter weight when hunting elk in the mountains. No DG where we hunt so no need for a heavier CRF rifle.

CoElkHunter: I also have a Ruger CRF in .25-06 (LH) and while it is accurate —- I would’ve preferred a PF for that caliber and to maybe save some weight. I now always take my Browning ABolt .270 when hunting out West or use a custom .30-06 built on an Sako action - both are PF and short rotation bolts, very fast and smooth.…the Browning ABolt is also nice and light - much appreciated after a few miles ! For my .375 H&H, it’s CRF and I think that was the way to go.