The Savage has always been an economy department store rifle, and it always will be. It's very cheaply made, and not very accurate. The word junk comes to mind.
The Remington 700 is the most accurate production rifle you can buy.
In my view, the M-700 is definitely an "economy department store rifle." And it always will be.
But then, I got by spoiled a bit by my first firearm purchase when, at the age of 18, I bought a 1927 Griffin and Howe Springfield off of the widow of my pedatric dentist. That rifle was funtional art and no reasonably intellegent person could proffer an argument claiming that it was not a finely crafted piece of equipment. I relied upon it as my main hunting rifle for 15 seasons and I would still be relying upon it now if the thing would have been fireproof in addition to being a piece of functional art.
To attemtp to constantly elevate a cheaply made M-700 into some paragon of fine gunmaking virtue is to engage in intellectual dishonesty of the highest order. To do so is akin to comparing a pre-schooler's first abstract attempts at fingerpainting with C.M. Russell's "Crippled But Still Coming" and drawing the false conclusion that they are both equal in terms of technical and artistic merit. They aren't, but that doesn't mean we can't appreciate the pre-schooler's effort on some level, too.
At my local Tahlequah Wal Mart, there are several M-700 variants to choose from. There is no equal to a Griffin and Howe Springfield to be found there. There is no Dakota. There is no Rigby. No Browning Safari built on the FN Mauser action. The M-700s share the same space with other stellar exhibits of fine gunmaking like the M-500 Mossberg shotgun and their equally hideous bolt action rifle.
Case closed..... At least as far as "economy department store rifles" is concerned.
But since Swampman brought the subject up, I'd rather have a real, honest-to-God "economy department store rifle" in the form of an old J.C. Higgins on the Husqvarna commercial Mauser action for big game hunting than any M-700 ever made. It isn't the "economy department store rifle" part that turns me off as much as the "M-700 Remington" part does.
As I see it, where being classed as "economy department store rifles" is concerned, the M-700 and Savage 110 are simialr peas in the same pod.
Remington couldn't produce the M-720 / M-721 cheap enough to remain competitive. So they cheapened it further and the highly regarded M-700 was the result. Those attributes that made the M-700 cheap to produce also made it consistantly accurate. There is no denying that.
The same thing goes for the Savage 110. When it was new to the market, much of the gun press echoed the comments of the American Rifleman, which found the then-new Savage 110 to be an accurate shooter, and one not particularly fussy about the ammo it was fed. This reputation for accuracy with respect to the 110 isn't anything new.
Like the M-700, the M-110 is essentially one tube (bolt body) riding inside another (receiver). This makes for a concentric action that can be cheaply made from bar stock by lathe turning operations. The concentric bit is part of why both of these actions are the basis for accurate rifles.
The M-110 has its receiver cut-outs for the ejection port far enough above the centerline to insure that stiffness isn't unduly compromised. This adds to the accuracy potential even further.
Of the two actions, I personlly think that Nicholas Brewer's design is the most innovative and in many ways, I believe that it was way ahead of its time. For almost fifty years, Savage has been about the only major maker to use the barrel lock nut method of mating the barrel to the reciever of a high-power sporting rifle. The way the barrel is attached to the Savage makes accurate headspace easy to achieve and easy to achieve from one rifle to the next. In theory, every Savage 110 ever made ought to be spot-on in terms of headspace diminson. The floating bolt head was another stroke of genius, allowing fuller engagement of critical locking surfaces without the need of laborious hand fitting and lapping of parts. In the 110, you've got a stiff, concentric action with accurate headspace and even locking lug engagement virtually assured by design. In simple terms, you've got some major pieces of the bolt action rifle accuracy puzzle already put together.
Add in fast lock time that some claim to be faster than even an M-700, and you've got yet another contributor to precision.
The Savage 110 is accurate by design. To infer that it isn't is nothing more than a display of ignorance.
To infer that it is made out of inferior material is also ignorant. The bar stock that Savage utilizes is a proprietary steel that happens to be some of the toughest stuff in gunmaking. That is a fact.
The 110, like the M-700, is an inherintly accurate design. The M-700 design, however, requires more precise hand work in order to achieve the best end result. That is okay provided that the corporate culture is one of "Let's make the best M-700s that we can" rather than "Lets see how cheap we can make M-700s today." This is where the true beauty of the M-110 is found. It simply doesn't take as much careful hand fitting of parts to end up with an acceptable end result that most will find to provide acceptable performance, durability, and service life.
The level of safety built into the 110 is also impressive to me, particularly in the area of venting gasses away from the shooter in the event of a pierced primer or ruptured cartridge case. Few other bolt action rifles can match the 110 for the level of engineering effort that went into errant gas management. Does a Remington have "false lugs" blocking the lug raceways? Does the M-700 have a fastener going through the bolt body which helps divert any gas traveling down the firing pin hole?
Speaking of safety, does the M-700 come with a three position safety catch which locks the bolt handle on full safe along with a middle position that blocks the trigger but allows bolt manipulation?
Back when the world was young with the dew still upon it, I might have agreed that the Remington M-700 was more finely finished than the M-110. That was then. This is now. Remington doesn't make a standard production rifle as nicely polished and blued as the 14 Classic. Perosnally, where fit and finish is concerned, I think Savage has come along so far that they pretty much went from hind-tit sucker to leader of the class in this area.
THe original trigger component geometry of the 110 meant that you really couldn't ever make the standard trigger match that of a Remington M-700 for safe, light pull, or crisp, creep-free pull. That was then. This is post Accu-Trigger now.
While I don't think that an M-700 could be confused with art, and while I have no desire to go down the M-700 road again, I don't think they're "junk," either.
I do think that as the sporting rifle market stands today, the Savage Model 14/114 Classic represents the best combination of performance, price, and build quality of any domestic bolt action sporting rifle in current production.
I'm deligted that Savage is finally offering aesthetics that match the performance the 110 series has always had. I am happy that they're finally making a sporting rifle that won't look too out of place sharing a gun cabinet with my Ugartechea side by side, my Auto 5 Light Twelve, or the wife's Merkel 1620.
I'll take mine in .250 Savage, please.
I'll obviously not have to worry about Swampman beating me to it when it shows up at my dealer.
-JP