ABout the cracked stocks. Almost always the stock cracks at the rear of the tang. Remove the barrel, and then unscrew and lift out the tang. If its tight to the mortise, take a half round chisel and relieve just a bit of wood behind the tang. Undercut the mortise so that the wood relief is less visible at the top of the stock, where the tang and wood come together. This allows the wood to expand and contract, and its much less likely to crack when the gun recoils.
Also, you can also consider glass bedding the tang, and the rear of the barrel. Sometimes the inletting for the tang, at the front, is not right, and there is nothing supporting the back of the barrel behind that front portion of the tang. That is why heavy rounds push the tang back far enough to cause the crack in the stock.
If you have some lipstick, or marking ink, you can do your own testing of the inlet for the whole tang. Its got to be close -- good contact with the wood at the rear of the tang, but even better contact with wood at the front of the tang and behind the whole barrel-- to take the recoil without splitting the stock. Everyone assumes that a factory stock was inletted properly. Most are. But sometimes employees sneak in wood that is not properly dried, and the inletting of the mortise for the tang and barrel is done before the stock totally dries.
If it dries afterwards, you have shrinkage, and this is the source of the problems later on. Sometimes, these gunstocks meet all the factory specs, but are sold in areas of the country that are much drier, and have lower relative humidity than in the factory host state. I know our Midwest winters often dry out stocks enough that stock screws have to be checked before taking the gun shooting in the late winter or early spring. If a Patriot were to sit in someone's WARM, dry house over winter, its likely the extremely dry air in the house will shrink the wood in the stock enough that recoil can now crack the stock.
Always check the stock bolts and screws on any gun before taking it out to the range or to hunt. When you put guns away to store in the Fall, loosen those same screws, so that the shrinkage, and spring swelling that will take place does not contract and then expand the wood so that it cracks on you. Tighten the screws before going out with the gun.
If you have never thought about it, the whole reason you are seeing lots of laminated gunstocks, or synthetic stocks, and glass bedding, or pillar bedded stocks is to deal with the constant problem that arise from Wood Swelling, and Shrinking, as the relative humidity around the gun changes. All these methods help to stabilize the relationship between the stock of a gun, and the barrel and action assembly.
I had a small crack develop behind the tang on a shotgun 20 years ago, and took it to a skilled gunsmith. He relieved the wood behind the tang, undercutting the back of the mortise a bit, then used fast drying epoxy to close the crack, before putting the stock back on the action. I had a bent extractor that he fixed with a whack with a lead head hammer- pure genius-- and the gun shot and functioned like new! I owned that gun and shot it regularly for the next 15 years before selling it, and I had no further problems with the crack. He taught me the value of undercutting that rear wall of the tang mortise. The stock was already 20 years old, walnut, and very stable. The stock bolt held the stock firmly to the action, and the tang screw held the tang to the top of the wrist.
