Dan B
Well-Known Member
I call her \"Ms. Frankenstein\"....
I'm a handgunner at heart...super big XP-100, Striker and T/C fan. but still have a super soft spot in my heart for a good deal on a long gun that needs a good home. Last week I managed to find a poor little orphan that needed a new place to live. It's a Savage 110, wood stock and chambered in .270 Winny. Got her out the door for under two bills...even with the Tasco 3-9X and see thru mounts!! What a deal!!
Anyhoo...I let her set for a day or so while stewing on what I wanted to do with her. I have a "budget build" in mind so I thought I'd run with it. The cartridge in mind is the .30 Gibbs...have one in a sporter weight rifle and shoots great...and I have a 30" long (1" muzzle dia) .308 Winny take off from a Rem action that needs used up! Got that from an estsate sale for $8. Cut off, rethreaded and chambered in .30 Gibbs would still leave 28"+ of stainless steel tube which would be perfect.
The stock can be a point of great expense in a build so I thought I'd try my hand at crafting something more useable from the factory wood club. The first thing any good stock needs is a cheek piece...so with a marker, handfull of wood screws and new bases/rings and scope mocked up, I started working on what would be the foundation of a new cheek piece. See first pic. I used the screws to be able to tweek the height of the cheek rest until it was just right!
Once the cheek piece was somewhat mocked in, I found that the stock grip angle was terrible when laying prone. So I grabbed more screws and ran them in the stock as a starting point to where I want to the grip to be. I tried to use a BVSS stock as a starting point. See pic #2. The hacked up areas were roughed for the molding material to adhere to.
I also wanted a "beefier" forearm on this rig, so I made a simple mold using a 1"x2" piece for the bottom and 1"x3" for the sides. The sling stud was removed and a screw installed and adjusted accordingly that once rested in the mold, the forearm would have a nearly parallel top bottom and be 2" wide across the bottom. I used wax paper in the mold to act as a release agent.
To do all the reshaping I used tigerhair (bondo w/ fiberlgass strands). This pic is of the semi-finished stock with cheek piece roughly filled and filed to cover the screws and add contour, grip angle reset and bottom flattened and the forearm reshaped.
Bottom of the forearm.
Top view of forearm.
Grip angle and new bottom angle.
I'm no expert at this but so far I am well pleased. The "white" look is the hardened and worked areas while the dark green has just been applied to fill some areas and will need worked some more.
So far it ain't pretty (like Ms. Frankenstein)...but the metal work comes next and that may bring the entire thing together a little better. To finish the stock I am going to skim coat with bondo to take out the rough areas then likely just spray bomb it tiger stripe.
I'm a handgunner at heart...super big XP-100, Striker and T/C fan. but still have a super soft spot in my heart for a good deal on a long gun that needs a good home. Last week I managed to find a poor little orphan that needed a new place to live. It's a Savage 110, wood stock and chambered in .270 Winny. Got her out the door for under two bills...even with the Tasco 3-9X and see thru mounts!! What a deal!!
Anyhoo...I let her set for a day or so while stewing on what I wanted to do with her. I have a "budget build" in mind so I thought I'd run with it. The cartridge in mind is the .30 Gibbs...have one in a sporter weight rifle and shoots great...and I have a 30" long (1" muzzle dia) .308 Winny take off from a Rem action that needs used up! Got that from an estsate sale for $8. Cut off, rethreaded and chambered in .30 Gibbs would still leave 28"+ of stainless steel tube which would be perfect.
The stock can be a point of great expense in a build so I thought I'd try my hand at crafting something more useable from the factory wood club. The first thing any good stock needs is a cheek piece...so with a marker, handfull of wood screws and new bases/rings and scope mocked up, I started working on what would be the foundation of a new cheek piece. See first pic. I used the screws to be able to tweek the height of the cheek rest until it was just right!
Once the cheek piece was somewhat mocked in, I found that the stock grip angle was terrible when laying prone. So I grabbed more screws and ran them in the stock as a starting point to where I want to the grip to be. I tried to use a BVSS stock as a starting point. See pic #2. The hacked up areas were roughed for the molding material to adhere to.
I also wanted a "beefier" forearm on this rig, so I made a simple mold using a 1"x2" piece for the bottom and 1"x3" for the sides. The sling stud was removed and a screw installed and adjusted accordingly that once rested in the mold, the forearm would have a nearly parallel top bottom and be 2" wide across the bottom. I used wax paper in the mold to act as a release agent.
To do all the reshaping I used tigerhair (bondo w/ fiberlgass strands). This pic is of the semi-finished stock with cheek piece roughly filled and filed to cover the screws and add contour, grip angle reset and bottom flattened and the forearm reshaped.
Bottom of the forearm.
Top view of forearm.
Grip angle and new bottom angle.
I'm no expert at this but so far I am well pleased. The "white" look is the hardened and worked areas while the dark green has just been applied to fill some areas and will need worked some more.
So far it ain't pretty (like Ms. Frankenstein)...but the metal work comes next and that may bring the entire thing together a little better. To finish the stock I am going to skim coat with bondo to take out the rough areas then likely just spray bomb it tiger stripe.
