45/70 Pump action rifle??

Rustydog

Rustydog

New member
I may be way off here, but during a recent trip to Alaska I saw a guy who had a 45/70 pump action rifle in SS and magna ported for bear protection. Time did not allow me to see it up close or determine who made it.

Has anyone seen one of these and do you know who make it? It looked like "bad medicine" for big bears!!

Rustydog
 
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Never heard of such a beast. Might have been custom built. What type of receiver/action did it have? I'm sure its possible for someone talented to take a long action 7600 or the out of production pump Brownings and re barrel it.
 
A pump action with a rimmed cartridge such as the .45-70? Sounds pretty tough to get that to feed reliably. I don't know why one would bother because of the great Marlin lever actions in .444, .45-70, and .450 Marlin cartridges. If I wanted a thumper in a pump I'd look around and find a 7600 in .35 Whelen.
 
There is a reproduction of the Colt Lightning out in 45 Colt. As far as getting rimmed cartridges to feed in a pump , no big deal Savage built the Mod 170 for 30-30 and it worked just fine.

AWS
 
AWS your too fast.

Actually there have been pump fed rifles for rimmed cartridges for years, Colt built their lightning in the late 1800's and several manufactures have sold pump 357's and 44 magnum rifles in just the last several. A 45/70 pump makes a lot of sense as once the weapon is fired the recoil helps get things moving in the right direction for the operation of the follow up shot and is a more natural movement than a lever action.
As long as the rifle had a tube magazine, the action would be much like a lever action with the draw bar working the bolt and carrier instead of a lever. At least that how I think it would work.
 
Sitting around here digging back into the little nooks and crannies of my mind (don't have my refference book here at the cabin)I believe the Burgess Rifle Co. built a pump for large rifle cartridges in the late 1800's.

AWS
 
I know about the old Colt Lightning and owned a Savage 170 for a time. Those along with your .12 gauge pump are tube magazine fed. The oldest Remington pumps the models 14 and 141 are in this same catagory. I seriously doubt any of these designs could take hot loaded .45-70 at 45,000 psi. None of those have been chambered for cartridges approaching such pressures as the hot rodded .45-70. And to add, 1880's big bores were low pressure black powder cartridges that couldn't approach those pressures at the time. Makes the .45-70 even more special doesn't it? Love the cartridge in my Marlin lever action.

With that in mind, I guess I sorta fixed my mind on the 7600 Remington pump rifles and their detachable magazine. That big old rimmed .45-70 might be kinda hard to cram in that "clip" of the 7600 and make it feed reliably. The .45-70 would need to be stacked with rims positioned just so, one ahead of the other directly over the top of each other. It would also need straight line feeding, and, that magazine doesn't seem a likely candidate for such a conversion. That's what hit my mind when I read the post.
 
Stretching the imagination, chambering the 45-70 in a 410 Rem 870. The receiver would probably accomodate the cartridge but the barrel would need to be beefed up I would think. Certainly not worth the effort but possible...
 
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