mr. utah: I am impressed !! Question: I've been wanting to do the same for a M70 and have been considering my options re: the action inletting: how are you planning on doing yours? thank you.
Starting with a semi-inlet stock with roughly the correct lines could save you a bunch of time and effort.
Getting the inletting right is of course critical to the function of the gun. The barreled action has to be at half depth, not be rolled to one side or the other (most evident by the trigger being angled off to one side), and not tipped relative to the top line of the stock. And of course the alignment between the receiver and the magazine box/bottom metal needs to be right.
On this project, the action is inlet into the wood quite oversized, and then traditional epoxy bedding fills in the rest. If you look at the second photo you will see two large holes and maybe see one tiny hole that have been drilled into the side of the stock. Bedding epoxy was injected into those holes to fill the gaps around the magazine box, and themselves later filled and leveled. The nice thing about a pattern stock is that you can do whatever it takes to get it right, in the hope that you save time on final stock, and you will not need to be making big changes on it, which increases the risk of an amateur flub up.
I would love to make more progress on it, but will be out of country for the next seven weeks or so. I have built a little fixture that can be clamped to a table and holds the bottom metal steady. I will take that with me and spend time polishing and shaping. I am using Blackburn bottom metal, which is top quality, but it still has a lot of machining marks.
