Time On Their Hands
he Great Depression played a part in creating the Model 70 legend. Sales of discretionary consumer goods took a terrible beating. Most families could barely afford necessities. Firearms manufacture was labor-intensive and required a highly-skilled workforce. Companies desperately wanted to keep their best workers (who were generally the oldest) and those workers wanted to keep their jobs.
During this time there was no incentive to rush the work, quite the opposite. Those skilled workers were given the time to carefully fit, tune and adjust actions and triggers, polish and blue metal parts, to select the best stock blanks to shape, finish, and hand checker. Prewar Model 70 rifles were virtually custom made. This dynamic was not unique to Winchester — Colt, Smith & Wesson, Savage and other guns from the same era show the same exceptional workmanship.
World War II suspended manufacture of sporting arms as the firearms industry went all-out to supply the armed forces of America and its allies. When peacetime production resumed the American economy had been transformed. The postwar economic boom pumped money into every level of society. Demand for consumer goods, firearms included, was unprecedented and Winchester was selling every gun it could make while doing its best to ramp up production — and found itself running into a bottleneck.
The skilled gunmakers from the 1930s were reaching retirement age in the 1950s and proving very hard to replace. Every manufacturer, whether making automobiles, airplanes, or kitchen appliances needed skilled workers. Tool and die makers and machinists were in great demand and the demand was reflected in wages. The inevitable result was a slow decline in the degree of fit, finish and polishing as the ’50s progressed which is why rifle enthusiasts boasted of their “pre-war” or “pre-1950s” Model 70s.
