New furniture

[Heath Robinson]

A quarter of a century ago I made a stock for a falling block hunting rifle. But the wood I used was just a plank of anonymous wood my dad had in the garage. And it had a knot-hole in a somewhat unfortunate place, and I was somewhat impatient when making it.

In terms of fit (to the rifle) it was perhaps somewhat better than most factory rifles of the time but nothing like a good job, and in terms of fit to the shooter it was also only OK. Length of pull was perhaps a bit too long, drop at the comb was just about perfect for the scope but the pistol grip was too close to the trigger and the but had too much pitch. The line of the bottom of the butt also wasn't great. The fore-end was pretty badly shaped, especially in section.


Before

But although at the time the intention was that this was just a first attempt, it has taken me all this time to get around to the second attempt. At least that gave the blank I got back the enough time to dry out...

[oafpatroll]

Fantastic result! Love the lines on it.

[Heath Robinson]

Recently I finally decided it was time.

Step 1: Measure and layout.
There doesn't seem to be much on Google about how to get a rifle-stock to fit the shooter properly. The only reasonably common piece of information is that the butt should touch the bicep whith the fore-arm bent at 90 degrees and the finger on the trigger. But depending on what "touch" means, and how you finger a trigger, and what you have on, that is not a very precise measurement. Furthermore, this is not necessarily always the only truth. For prone target shooting, making it a bit longer can be advantageous, but for off-hand shooting, and especially for shouldering a rifle quickly, a slightly shorter stock can help. As for the other dimensions, there is virtually nothing available.



More pitch causes less muzzle rise, but more recoil to be transferred to the shooter's cheek. So I reduced it a bit as muzzle rise wasn't really a problem and who doesn't want a more comfortable shooting experience. A more open grip is also supposed to make the rifle "come up" more naturally, and since the old grip's natural position placed my finger to want to rest on the trigger with the second joint, I moved that back a bit. I tried to keep the comb height the same.

I have always had a thing for full stocks, and my blank was just long enough to get a full stock out assuming I put a tip on it, I decided to do that, but since I have had a bad experience with accuracy on a full stock and since I had enough wood, I would do a short fore-end as well.

A friend cut the basic shape out on his band-saw for me.

[Heath Robinson]

Fantastic result! Love the lines on it.

Hey, hold on, that's the "before" pic!

[oafpatroll]

Hey, hold on, that's the "before" pic!

Ha ha! You obviously have very much higher standards than I. Looking forward to seeing what the new one looks like.

[Heath Robinson]

This action uses a through-bolt for stock retention. Getting that in the right place was the first real challenge. Firstly, I don't have anywhere near the dexterity to do this free-hand. Secondly, the hole is far too deep for my mill's spindle travel, and with the height involved I would have to clamp the material hanging off the side of the bed (possible, but complicated). I decided the best option was to drill it on the lathe. I made a "bracket" with three adjustable legs so that height and angle could be adjusted, and and applied clamping force by means of two angle-iron "straps". The biggest advantage of this method was one I hadn't even thought of before I started: I could basically use the drill bit's tip and a dead center in the tail-stock to get the alignment spot on. I still had to drill from both sides (due both to my lathe's relatively short bed and the length of the longest 10mm long-series drill bit I could get), drilling 10mm from the action end and 16mm from the but end. One of or both the holes wandered a bit, but not enough to cause a problem.



The next step was to just rough out the majority of the inletting on the mill.



Before resorting to the smoking-lamp (a modified lantern), chisels, files and sandpaper.

[Heath Robinson]

With the inletting done, I started the shaping. This was all done by hand using rasps, then metalworking files, with frequent reference to a straight-edge.
Before shaping the grip I whipped up a heavily-inspired-by-Ruger grip cap on the mill and rotary table from a dark wood (I think it's African Blackwood). What is also evident from the photos to follow is that I also decided to "Wundhammer" the hell out of the grip, on both sides (while this is definitely "my" rifle, I like my friends to also be able to use them, and I have several left-handed friends, one of which only has a left hand at the moment, having lost the use of his right after a motorbike prang.











Since the prices have gone through the roof I decided to re-use the Pachmayr Decelerator recoil pad. And I decided to inlet metal inserts for all the screw-holes. Because for some reason I just can't use a screwdriver without marring the screws I decided to use Allen-head cap-screws for all the externally-visible screws, but by using metal inserts I can easily change to appropriately -timed slotted screws in the future since one can actually get slotted screws in metric threads.
The sling swivels are my own twist on a QD system I saw years ago. These are completely flush when finished, which I really like.



And finally, the first coat of Tru-oil to protect it from all the millions of oils in what is primarily a metal-working shop, and one which's owner is not too concerned about cleanliness to boot.

[Heath Robinson]

Now I could start with the fore-ends. I decided to do the short one first (as I felt it would be easier).
Since the fore-end hangs from the barrel on a dovetailed hanger, I knew I was going to full-length glass bed it, so I could take some liberties with the inletting as long as the edges were good.
Because why not make life more difficult than it needs to be, I also decided to do an ebony tip with a widow's peak, so making the tip and inletting the fore-end for it was step one. It was then attached using Epidermix 372 stained black and two longitudinal pieces of threaded bar.

Once again I did a bit of rough inletting work on the milling machine.







Glass bedding was also done with black-stained Epidermix, and very nearly resulted in disaster as I clearly didn't take release agent application seriously enough. Thank goodness I decided to de-mould after 12 hours instead of 24!

<a href="https://postimg.cc/GB1RnHfJ" target="_blank"><img src="https://i.postimg.cc/GB1RnHfJ/20241029-185129.jpg" alt="20241029-185129"/></a>
Note the damaged edge from beating it off.

Shaping was relatively simple after that. Again, only hand tools used in this step.



And after inletting the screw escutcheon (made to allow the use of a captive screw) and the sling swivel, the first coat of oil could go on.

[Heath Robinson]

So now it was time for the full-length fore-end.
I was wary of doing this for a number of reasons. Firstly as mentioned, I have had a bad experience accuracy-wise with a full-length fore-end which kept warping.
Secondly I didn't really want to increase the weight or move the point of balance. So this fore-end was made slimmer than the shorty, and I removed far more material from the barrel channel than strictly necessary, in the hope that a nice thick layer of bedding compound would ensure long-term stability. So I went even further on the mill this time.







This time I really went bananas with release agent, and the result came out pretty good.



And the widow's peak on the tip also came out better.


The result:

[Heath Robinson]

Now obviously such a stock will not work on a target rifle, as the groups will walk when the rifle gets hot, but I took it to the range yesterday and with the full stock but shooting very slowly (walking forward between every two shots) managed to put 5 shots into less than 1MOA with the full-length fore-end. I am very happy with that, since this is after all a 200m bushveld hunting rifle on a single-shot action. In fact, that's better than I managed with the short fore-end, but I shot that rather quickly in the hope of beating the rain and still got less than 1.5MOA.

Also the fit and finish is still not stellar when compared to "best quality" rifles and custom stock-makers, it's a whole lot better than mark 1.

At some stage, after sufficient girding of loins and practice (and the making and sourcing of some more tools) I will try not to bugger it up while checkering it...