Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Single Shots Curly maple No. 3

Back in 2006 I was visiting home and went out to see my great-aunt at her place, where I deer hunted as a kid. The house was built in the 1870s, and includes a spring in the woods down the hill. An ice storm had hit the night before and the forest was a bit of a mess. Regardless, I wanted to walk around and see all the old deer stands and soak in the memories. Most of the men who occupied those stands are dead now or live far away. As I got to the spring I saw the old sugar maple that grew beside it had split down the crotch in the storm. It looked as though there might be a bit of figure to the wood laying there on the ground. My cousin said he planned to turn the lot of it into firewood, but wouldn't mind if I used the chainsaw to slab off a bit for whatever project I might be able to use it for. I used it to fit up a gun!







Several years ago I bought a No. 3 in .223. I sent it off to JES for conversion to my favorite big game round, the 9.3X62, and then sent two blanks from my well dried maple to Custom Rifle Stocks in Aaronsburg, PA. He did a great job profiling the blank and drilling the hole for the stock bolt. Between kids, work, and general adulting it took a couple years to get this one done, but I'm pleased with the results. I still need to inlet some sling swivel studs, and perhaps some day I'll checker it, but for now I plan to enjoy the last three weeks of deer season with it! I love the fact that now I get to kill deer in a Alaska using a rifle stocked with wood that grew about 150 yards from where I killed my first buck, with wood from a tree men who were my heros walked by.....you get the idea.

I slimmed down the forend and added an ebony tip. It was apparent the factory lever would be a problem with the No.1 style wood and any sort of recoil so I cut off the tail of the lever and had a tool and die micro-welder weld it back on to my specs before filing and bluing it. With the Vari-X III in weaver mounts, it weighs 8 pounds on the nose loaded. The weather here has been pretty poor for any sort of accuracy testing, but sighting it in at 50 yards produced some one hole groups in-between bouts of wind blowing the target over. It seems to like 250gr Accubonds and Varget. Now I need to go blood it.