Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Muzzleloaders Ramblings of an amateur gun tinkerer

This is my latest project....restocking a Ruger 77/50 inline .50 caliber. This rifle has been great over the years. Accurate and a great pleasure to hunt with. I have used it to kill more deer than I care to try and remember...however the original straight stock has never really appealed to me once I had purchased it.

I figured it was time to put a new piece of wood on it and make the ergonimics of the rifle a little more to my liking. I started with the scrap piece of walnut left over from the flinter I did that I pictured on a different post. This wood has been off the stump for a considerable number of years and more than ready for some carving. The grain flow is perfect to highlight the addition of the pistol grip and the density is so that it should take a decent checkering pattern. I am going for a stock that is thicker in many dimensions from the original, namely the forearm and wrist. I plan to fluff it a little with a ruger butt pad and a steel grip cap.

When I began this project I had given some thought to how the action was held in the stock. The dinky original screws seemed to be a little bit light duty and they were slotted. Since I take this rifle apart often for cleaning the slotted screws had shown some abuse. My cure for both, right or wrong, was to drill and tap the reciever for a bigger fine threaded stock bolt with an allen head or a torx head. Let me tell you now that a ruger reciever is harder than hell. This I discovered after breaking the first 1/4-28 tap off. Proved positive after the second tap broke. Yes I know how to tap a hole and now I'm out two taps. With some judicious use of a dremel grinding tool and about two hours time I managed to get the broken taps out and save the integrety of the threads already formed. Whew...vulgarities ceased at that point....

Here are some pics so far.....

This is what I started with.....


I did some initial inletting on a bridgeport mill and got it to within 1/32 all around except the barrel channel.


Then I did the old fashion thing with a scraper and lamp black....and a Dremel Tool....



Here is the result of a bunch of hours of inletting the barrel and action...



Today I inletted the trigger guard....
[img]http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c66/wildswalker/50%20ml%20pics/triggerguard.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c66/wildswalker/50%20ml%20pics/triggerguardbetter.jpg[/img]

Next step is tommorrow finish the action inletting ie the hole thru for the trigger....making sure the the safety works properly and making the ramrod hole larger...

More to follow as work progresses...hope ya enjoy my aggravations.....I do....