Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats Back to the stockmakers, making a pattern

Drove over to Chris Schofield's shop yesterday with my LH Model 70 so he could set up the inletting for the pattern stock he's making. Last week I mailed him a Remington BDL stock for the exterior and he had that basic pattern already done.

Trying to put a Model 70 into a stock designed for a Remington 700 action isn't the easiest thing in the world, but with a sculptor's eye and lots of bondo anything is possible. It was fun watching this all take shape. I didn't get as many pics as I wanted but you get so wrapped up in watching the creative process you kind of forget.

Anyway, a bit of the process.

The factory BDL stock taped up from the pantograph, my model 70 in pieces taped and covered in shoe polish waiting to be slathered in bondo.



The initial set of the recoil lug. Hey, it's almost ready to shoot!



Inletting around the trigger guard with the Bridgeport milling machine. I love watching big ol' heavy machines like this at work.



Getting that inletting just right. Bondo is your friend. I was joking with Chris about how you always hear to use a piece of "scrap wood" for mixing bondo and epoxy and such. Chris' "scrap wood" is a piece of nicely figured walnut.



Chris setting the tang just right.



I have heard it said that two things you don't want to watch being made are laws and sausages. To that list you can add watching a pattern stock being built up around your nice new Winchester rifle.



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But everything turned out fine. The bondo came off and the rifle is all cleaned up and re-assembled. Chris helped me pick out a really nice blank of walnut and is going to cut the stock here pretty soon. More on that in time.