[quote=Ted Schefelbein
I believe I read right here that you can see the remnants of a screw grip machining operation on a disassembled 700. The screw grip was not fitted to the 700, but, it wasn’t worth changing tooling and operations from the former guns to build the new model, sans screw grip.
Best,
Ted[/quote]
Ted, I'm not sure what "remnants" of 400 machining would be visible on a 700. Surely not signs of a slot in the breech face which is quite prominent on the 400 series guns (to engage the rib extension and house the famous "screw" part of the mechanism) but totally lacking on 700 series guns. Given the postwar economy, W&S elected to cut some corners when replacing the 400 series guns with the 700. Rib extension/slot in the breech face was a pretty obvious corner to cut. Again, per Crawford and Whatley, W&S made about 85,000 doubles from 1897-1979. A third of that total were 700 series guns. The machining and tooling corners they cut don't seem to have hurt sales of the 700s.
