Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors O/T, "Board", Playing in the Wood Pile.

West System and I are old friends. I've consumed 50 gallon drums of the stuff in my life, literally (in the maritime industry). But, there's no substitute for intelligent grain layout in a rifle stock. Prettiness is trumped by simple stability every time. What good is a rifle that won't hold zero because its squirrely-grained stock moves with every whim of Mother Nature? Or a stock that wishes only to crack at recoil-bearing points? Such a gun is a lesser thing in terms of meeting the definition of a "good reliable rifle", even if it secures the accolades of admirers with its fancy figure. (Note here also that "figure" isn't the same as "grain". It's possible to have beautiful figure along with nice grain - fiddleback figure derived from quartersawing is a prime example.) The ultimate trick is to encompass jaw-dropping figure where it doesn't matter at the same time encompassing tight straight grain where it does matter, to whit the wrist and action bearing points, and fore arm where you truly don't want wood that moves at the slightest change in atmospheric conditions.

When designing/building a hunting rifle or especially a target rifle, give me tight straight grain, preferably cut from an old slow growing tree and air dried to perfection, because form definitely follows function in those cases. I'll save the fancy stuff for the safe queens whose purpose in life is to massage my eyeballs!

Small wonder that composite stocks are the darling of modern precisionists and extreme weather enjoyers. They've surrendered.