Guys,
This is not a change in procedures, this is the way it always has been. We make all our stocks as light as we think we can and not have a lot of failures with broken out recoil lugs or fore-ends broken off trying to get the barreled action out of the stock after a bedding job.
We have always gotten a lot of orders requesting "light fill" or "light as possible fill" or "KS" fill or "mountain rifle fill" or "upside-down left-hand Vulcan fill", and we have always filled the stocks with our standard fill. That is "light as possible". We have always gotten a small weight variation in our stocks, one or two or three ounces. It is not the exact science you may think. Molded in colors weigh an ounce or two more than a painted stock. The resin is warmer in the summer than in the winter and may have a bit more bleed out of the mold when it's under pressure,etc. There are a lot of little variables.
When we mix in interior fill for the stocks it is mixed in big Hobart bread mixers in batches of 10 lbs or 20 lbs. Each batch has a certain receipe for that fill. When we started doing the KS stocks for Remington we needed to take about one, repeat one, ounce off the stocks to make their weight, so we added one extra cup of microbaloons to the standard fill to make KS fill. It saved about one ounce per stock. We only mixed it when we had a batch of KS stocks to fill. We have never mixed up a batch to use 3/4 of a pound to fill one stock and then thrown the other 9+ lbs away just to save one ounce on a single stock. Since Remington is discontinuing the "KS" rifles after a 25 year run due to lack of sales we will not be mixing KS fill again.
Doesn't matter, we never did it anyway except for the KS stocks and there is more that one ounce variation in the stocks anyway.
So, nothing has changed. The stocks will not be any heavier than they have ever been. We are not making them any different that we have for the last 10 or 15 years. We will still accept orders with any terminology of fill you want to say, and we will still make them the way we have always made them "as light as possible". It's just that now you know how it's really done. Magnum fill is just a more solid glass (more glass fibers in the resin)in the action area, and adds about 4 to 6 ounces to the stock. It's used for anything from the big .338's and up. Standard fill seems to be fine for all the calibers up thru the big .30's. "Sniper fill" is just "magnum fill" with the butt filled with the same light weight solid mixture we use in the fore-end so that it will support some of the hareware options.
The only reason I decided to bring this subject up is because my e-mail volume is way up (I'm not complaining) but so I didn't have to answer so many e-mail about the weight difference between "light fill", "light as possible fill", "KS fill" and "mountain rifle fill". The answer is "none at all"
Regards to all, Dick D.
