kansas_volunteer
45 Cal.
It's good to see you are refining the shape of the stock. You recountoured the area around the forend cap and entry thumble almost exactly the way I did mine. It makes a great deal of difference it appearance.
As the kit comes, the lock panels are merely suggested. I reshaped the panel area so they were actually raised panels. At the rear of the panel I had to the blend the work into the wrist.
At the butt wood simply can't be taken down only in the last couple of inches until it blends with the butt plate. You needed to do the blending all the way up to the wrist to get a decent look.
The comb of the stock will need to be lowered at the heel to blend the wood to the tang on top of the butt plate. So, again you will need to start at the front, from the nose, and blend all the way back to make things look right. Looking down from the top you will need to narrow the nose a bit and then carry the lines all the way back to the butt.
Flute the nose.
On my rifle I found the butt swelled in the middle. To check pinch the stock between a thumb and first finger at the wrist and slide them towards the butt. If the stock is swollen you will feel it in you fingers. I took all the swelling out.
Use your fingers a lot to check everything. We used to call pinching things with the fingers using our Polack calipers.
As a result of all the work on the butt its shape had been greatly refined. It was much less club like and very traditional looking. The stock also lost a lot of weight. (I wish I could refine the shape of my own butt and lose weight.)
When doing all the work on the stock I used a flexible ruler to check for flow and smoothness. Without flexing it I could lay the edge on the wood to check if I had straight lines where straight line should be. On the swollen side of the butt the ruler rocked initially. When the the swell was eliminated the edge of the ruler touched wood its full length. The ruler could be flexed over the curved surface of the butt and the lines of the curves could be seen to be smooth or not.
As the kit comes, the lock panels are merely suggested. I reshaped the panel area so they were actually raised panels. At the rear of the panel I had to the blend the work into the wrist.
At the butt wood simply can't be taken down only in the last couple of inches until it blends with the butt plate. You needed to do the blending all the way up to the wrist to get a decent look.
The comb of the stock will need to be lowered at the heel to blend the wood to the tang on top of the butt plate. So, again you will need to start at the front, from the nose, and blend all the way back to make things look right. Looking down from the top you will need to narrow the nose a bit and then carry the lines all the way back to the butt.
Flute the nose.
On my rifle I found the butt swelled in the middle. To check pinch the stock between a thumb and first finger at the wrist and slide them towards the butt. If the stock is swollen you will feel it in you fingers. I took all the swelling out.
Use your fingers a lot to check everything. We used to call pinching things with the fingers using our Polack calipers.
As a result of all the work on the butt its shape had been greatly refined. It was much less club like and very traditional looking. The stock also lost a lot of weight. (I wish I could refine the shape of my own butt and lose weight.)
When doing all the work on the stock I used a flexible ruler to check for flow and smoothness. Without flexing it I could lay the edge on the wood to check if I had straight lines where straight line should be. On the swollen side of the butt the ruler rocked initially. When the the swell was eliminated the edge of the ruler touched wood its full length. The ruler could be flexed over the curved surface of the butt and the lines of the curves could be seen to be smooth or not.
