I going to admit a couple things. First thing is that I almost deleted this thread and started again since I started with another stock. But that wouldn't be the right thing to do. I thought about deleting this because I was upset on how my stock was coming out, it was on a bit of a downward spiral. In all honesty it's not really that bad, but it's not what I was wanting for this project. The second thing I'm going to admit is that I'm not a talented as I want to think and as some people may think I am.
Here's how things went wrong, I tried to copy the excellent work of too many other stock makers. I looked at so many photos of fine custom guns, and stocks and thought 'oh i like that feature' and 'I'm going to do that detail'. Bottom line is the things I had in my mind were not coming out right to my eye. That and the totality of the things I was doing, and doing not quite as good as I had seen them done by others, was making everything look bad to me. So I reset.....and I'm so glad I did!
The stock shown above is a Claro Walnut "Old Classic Style" from Richards. I called and was able to talk to them to find out if they had any seconds in stock that might be able to ship sooner than starting from scratch. Also, seconds are discounted because of flaws. This is a second, but was graded a "A Fancy". I like the grain and coloration on this one, I do wish it had some figure but I'm satisfied. The knots I can live with, and in fact really don't bother me at all. The fact that the defects brought the price down by about half makes it even easier to accept.
The inletting on this stock is soooo much better than the previous one. My foggy memory can't recall exactly what that stock was, but I'm almost sure from looking at it is not Claro, and from working on it I'm almost sure was not 99% inlet. This new one is. The inletting required only very minor scraping to get it done, mostly in the barrel channel to deepen it, the shape was great. One 'issue' was that after getting it bottomed out in the inletting, it still sat a bit proud. I did take down the shelf that the bottom of the action sits on and now it's great. I'm doing some work on the outside, mainly grip area and getting the tang flush.
I'll update with pics after working on it in the shop tomorrow.
