Limited Run of MSR 54.18

[Ghostofwar]

I was just browsing the Anschutz North America website and stumbled on something interesting. It seems they have found a small batch of MSR actions and will be releasing them as barreled actions with a sporter barrel. If I had the money I would be all over this. I'm sure plenty of silhouette shooters will jump at the change to get one.

Her is the link. Scroll down about halfway.

http://www.anschutznorthamerica.com/rifles.html

[Boyd L.]

More here:
http://www.rimfirecentral.com/forums/sh ... p?t=578523

[DavidABQ]

Very nice! I wish I could afford one of those in a Canyon Creek stock. That would make a nice combination!

[BCloninger]

Hmmm... Plotting how to get one. May have to sit on it (figuratively speaking only - ouch) for awhile before getting a stock.

[ter]

After you fit a stock, to would have a very expensive investment. I think buying a used action and stating with a Lilja barrel would be the way to go. I would not want a factory sporter barrel on a rifle I had over 2000 sunk into.

[BCloninger]

After you fit a stock, to would have a very expensive investment. I think buying a used action and stating with a Lilja barrel would be the way to go. I would not want a factory sporter barrel on a rifle I had over 2000 sunk into.

Either way, it would still shoot better than I can!

[Ghostofwar]

I thought more people would be jumping at the chance to get there hands on one of these. I know they will probably cost a pretty penny, but if you want the best, you gotta spend the money. If I had the money to upgrade from my 1712 I would definitely jump at the chance to get one of these. However, I hardly get a chance to shoot a match these days so I guess I'll just stick with what I have. Maybe when I win the lottery...

[atomicbrh]

As a family we have and have had a variety of Smallbore Silhouette rifles. This was not a good marketing decision to put the sporter barrel on this action. It would have been smarter to sell the receiver, trigger and bolt assembly alone. Most people willing to spend that much money know exactly which barrel they want and usually it is not a factory Anschutz barrel. If it had been sold this way it would be more efficient to build it into a frankenhunter or a heavy rifle. The trigger could have been left as it is in 5018 configuration for heavy rifle or easily converted to 5022 configuration for the hunter rifle. Then, it would have been a simple decision to fit a taper sporter barrel for hunter or a heavy rifle barrel for standard smallbore. Also, there seems to be a trend in the last couple of years toward single shot actions even in the hunter class when the top competitors build a new rifle. Maybe then these would have sold like hotcakes.

[Jim T.]

As a family we have and have had a variety of Smallbore Silhouette rifles. This was not a good marketing decision to put the sporter barrel on this action. It would have been smarter to sell the receiver, trigger and bolt assembly alone. Most people willing to spend that much money know exactly which barrel they want and usually it is not a factory Anschutz barrel. If it had been sold this way it would be more efficient to build it into a frankenhunter or a heavy rifle. The trigger could have been left as it is in 5018 configuration for heavy rifle or easily converted to 5022 configuration for the hunter rifle. Then, it would have been a simple decision to fit a taper sporter barrel for hunter or a heavy rifle barrel for standard smallbore. Also, there seems to be a trend in the last couple of years toward single shot actions even in the hunter class when the top competitors build a new rifle. Maybe then these would have sold like hotcakes.

That is your opinion and you know what they say about those. Has Anschutz ever sold just an action with a trigger in the USA???? If not, I suppose it is due to that German stubbornness/intelligence. I suspect the Anschutz people saw enough people throw away a perfectly good Anschutz heavy barrel off of a 54.18 MSR and came up with this solution to save them (the throwers) some money. BTW is your house as big a Dieter's?

[BCloninger]

There's nothing wrong with a 1712 barrel, and the cost to Anschutz is minimal, although it sure would look nice with a Lilja or Broughton barrel. At a wild guess, their real reason for barreling the action is that it helps with an import regulation.

[atomicbrh]

Yes, Jim T. My house is bigger than Dieter's and my shop is bigger than Dieter's. So are lots of people's houses and shops on this forum but that is beside the point. Dieter also does not have a 100 meter range on his personal property. One thing I do not want that Dieter has is a government mandated percentage of lazy, inept communist workers from the former East Germany. Remember Reagan saying, "Mr. Gorbachev tear down that wall". When the wall went down all West German factories were forced to take in a certain percentage of East German workers. Anschutz quality went down. I bought some new 1712's in the years just after the wall went down. Those 1712's had many problems: broken ejection tab, failure to feed with any magazine, failure to extract, tooling marks on crown and on and on. Due to the skill of Steve Moore who has passed away since then everything including re-bluing one rifle was covered under warranty and put as it should have been when it left the factory. My wife is of German ancestry. She is stubborn, intelligent and has tons of self-discipline unlike some of the workers Dieter was forced to take. Anschutz has always been famous for their ability to come up with ways to make profits off of parts they find laying around. After buying and selling many Anschutz, I now just look at them all as a blank canvas to be refined by the handful of skilled rifle builders here that build Silhouette rifles. I hope that the quality control problems have been solved and Dieter has been able to rid himself of the non-caring, unskilled employees. Speculating about why they put barrels on these 54.18 repeaters. In addition to import restrictions, it might be because they could not test the feeding, functioning of the action and trigger.

(Disclaimer: I do not know the size Dieter's House or shop. The intent of that statement was to joke around with Jim T.)

[Jim T.]

Yes, Jim T. My house is bigger than Dieter's and my shop is bigger than Dieter's. So are lots of people's houses and shops on this forum but that is beside the point. Dieter also does not have a 100 meter range on his personal property. One thing I do not want that Dieter has is a government mandated percentage of lazy, inept communist workers from the former East Germany. Remember Reagan saying, "Mr. Gorbachev tear down that wall". When the wall went down all West German factories were forced to take in a certain percentage of East German workers. Anschutz quality went down. I bought some new 1712's in the years just after the wall went down. Those 1712's had many problems: broken ejection tab, failure to feed with any magazine, failure to extract, tooling marks on crown and on and on. Due to the skill of Steve Moore who has passed away since then everything including re-bluing one rifle was covered under warranty and put as it should have been when it left the factory. My wife is of German ancestry. She is stubborn, intelligent and has tons of self-discipline unlike some of the workers Dieter was forced to take. Anschutz has always been famous for their ability to come up with ways to make profits off of parts they find laying around. After buying and selling many Anschutz, I now just look at them all as a blank canvas to be refined by the handful of skilled rifle builders here that build Silhouette rifles. I hope that the quality control problems have been solved and Dieter has been able to rid himself of the non-caring, unskilled employees. Speculating about why they put barrels on these 54.18 repeaters. In addition to import restrictions, it might be because they could not test the feeding, functioning of the action and trigger.

That is an interesting story Bobby, try as I might I can't independently confirm such an employment mandate after the fall of East Germany. Do you have a link or at least a citation that I could refer to? If in fact it is true, I would find it hard to believe that Anschutz would let their quality control lapse so that those inferior products would be allowed out of the formerly West German factory.

[atomicbrh]

Jim: All joking aside in this reply. I purchased our first two 1712's in McMillan stocks about 11 years ago. Robertson Composites did not exist at that time. I had so much trouble with those two rifles that I sent them to Steven K. Moore at 10 ring services in Jacksonville, Fl. Steve has since passed away. At that time 10 ring was a warranty repair center for Anschutz. Steve told me about how the influx of East German workers caused problems at the factory and how he had started receiving many brand new Anschutz rifles for repair. Steve was a trustworthy person but did not use the internet. I was upset about those two rifles and I do not care who knows. "My story" came directly from the East Coast Anschutz Repair Center at the time. I am older and wiser now. I learned a lot about Anschutz from my experiences with those two non-functioning rifles that Steve massaged into the fantastic rifles that they should have been direct from the factory. If I buy a rifle that does not function properly now, I do not become impatient. I just ship it off to one of the well-known rifle builders and it comes back working as it should.

Now I will say this. Steve Boelter is the driving force behind the present day Anschutz North America. Nothing to do with the old 10 ring services. Steve shoots Silhouette and knows what this game is all about. He even shot at the Southern Nationals a few years ago. If you buy a Anschutz that originates from Steve that product will be what Steve says it is and he will stand by it.

[atomicbrh]

An addition to the previous post: I found my hand written notes about one of our 1712's that Steven K. Moore, CEO of 10 ring repaired under warranty. The facts are accurate. The conversation took place at 3:40 P.M. on Thursday November 3, 2005. Steve was a genius and always told the truth. I sure do miss him. My wife's primary Smallbore rifle is one of those 1712's from 2005 in the original stock.

[Jim T.]

An addition to the previous post: I found my hand written notes about one of our 1712's that Steven K. Moore, CEO of 10 ring repaired under warranty. The facts are accurate. The conversation took place at 3:40 P.M. on Thursday November 3, 2005. Steve was a genius and always told the truth. I sure do miss him. My wife's primary Smallbore rifle is one of those 1712's from 2005 in the original stock.

What a coincidence I purchased a 1712FWT and a 54.18 MSR from Champions Choice (I can text you a copy of the invoices in you would like) around that same time(fifteen years after the Berlin Wall fell) and have not had one issue with either one. I have no doubt you have more experience with Anschutz rifles, but I do have some. I acquired my first directly from Anschutz somewhere around 1973-74 timeframe (my dad arranged for a German beer distributor in Milwaukee to ship it in a container full of Hofbrau) it was a 1407 that I eventually sold to a girl on our team who went on to become a multiple time All American at East Tennessee State University. I acquired a 1413 shortly thereafter and sold it last year for 8 times what I paid for it in 1974. BTW, the 50 meter test target for the 1413 was not much smaller that the test targets for my 1712 and 54.18.

Just so we don't have anymore conjecture as to why the barreled action that was the original subject of this thread was conceived I provide below a direct quote from the Anschutz NA website the wording of which would most likely be approved by Steve B.:

At the factory we were able to track down a small batch of MSR 54:18 actions and decided to make them into Sporters. The idea was to allow shooters to have all the advantages of the 5018 match trigger in a sporter configuration.


Finally, I can assure you that if all former West German factories were forced to employ a certain percentage of former East German, Lazy, Commie Bastard, pukes you would be able to find discussion of such a program somewhere on the internet. I do thank you for piquing my interest in this subject and I found several interesting studies and articles about the subject. I have provided a link to one of these below. It is interesting that most of these studies and articles found that East Germans were more motivated and harder working that those in the West and only needed proper training and facilities to shine. One such instance of this was GM Opel where they built and equipped a proper factory, and trained the former East German workers, such that they were able to build a car in almost half the time of European workers. I encourage you to read the study (it is not dated, but I would guess it was written around 1995-96).

https://martindale.cc.lehigh.edu/sites/ ... /doyle.pdf

On a related note, I am currently considering 2 models of a German auto company that builds such cars in Lepzig and have no qualms at all about all of the former East German individuals who staff this factory. I can't say this about the cars made in Canton and Blue Springs.