Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Vintage Remington Varmint Special wood stock

This is a '70's era Remington Varmint Special wood stock that came in for pillars. Normally, I like to do the final bedding but having done some work for this gentleman before, I'm confident in his bedding abilities. It has some history as you can see, including an attempt at bedding the forward receiver ring and recoil lug with AcraGlas Gel.

Anyway...here's a few pics:

Typical older wood stock compression. You can see the imprint of the floor plate hinge area in the wood. Holes have been milled with a sharp 1/2" end mill with a tooth angle specifically for wood, not metal :



At the back, there's a chunk missing from the trigger mortise....not uncommon on the older 700 wood stocks:



The AcraGlas Gel is lifting from the stock due to poor surface preparation. The owner will knock all this and the recoil lug area out, prep it properly and bed it with Pro Bed 2000:



Pillars getting ready to be epoxied in. I normally like to use 5/8" pillars on the 700's but went with 1/2" on this one as the front of the tang area is pretty narrow. These older wood stocks can surprise you and when a razor sharp end mill is plunging down through old wood...it's not the kind of surprise you want. Pillar I.D. is 5/16". The installer tool is something I made from a piece of aluminum round. There's a small step on the end that's 5/16" diameter and the shaft O.D. is .475. Works good to guide the pillars in:



All better now. The pillars were left .015 above the floor of the bottom metal inletting to provide a solid fit for the bottom metal. The owner will also bed the inlet to the bottom metal. Done this way, the bottom metal will be well supported and not flex and deflect when the action screws are tightened....which will stress the action:



Good shootin' -Al