Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats Lightweight Hunter Build

I found myself in the market for a lightweight, general purpose hunting rifle. After some positive experiences with Winchester M70 Featherweights, I decided to build one into such a rifle. The donor action is a late 90’s Classic Stainless Featherweight chambered in .308 Winchester. I managed to find a used McMillan Edge stock with a blind magazine inlet and sporter barrel channel to house the action.

The first step was to cut the stock to my correct LOP, chip out the old bedding (acraglass) and begin bedding the barrel channel and recoil lug. I also chose to fill the checkering on the stock





All was well until I went to remove the action from the bedding. I had used some cut off action screws as locating pins to keep the action positioned properly in the stock while the bedding compound cured. While I remembered to wax the locating pins, i neglected to wax the inside of the pillars and didn’t think about the threads on the pins creating a mechanical lock with the inside of the pillar. Doh.






The cute little factory pillar decided to part ways with the lightweight edge filled McMillan.


Fortunately, I had a much more skookum Badger Ordnance pillar in the parts bin and set to work “inletting” the stock with the hand held Bridgeport.

I mixed up some Marine Tex with a handful of microballoons, installed the pillar and placed the action back in the stock for another attempt. When the time came to pull the action out I was left with...



Success! A nicely bedded recoil lug, solid pillar install and the magazine box actually ended up getting bedded in nicely too. A much needed redemption for the previous days negligence.


With the stock now back in a functional state, I turned to the cosmetics. I finished up the barrel channel reduction and free floated it to the tiny “shank” of the featherweight barrel. I also finished filling the checkering and the recessed area around the front action screw escutcheon.







With the body work complete, I hit the stock with a coat of woodland brown duracoat followed by matte black and snow grey specks.



After finishing the stock, I turned to the metalwork. The factory barrel was cut back to 20”, factory aluminum trigger guard sanded flat, NECG action screw heads ground flat, and everything refinished. I blasted the parts with 80 grit garnet, greased heavily with moly grease and buffed them out with 0000 steel wool. The factory trigger guard got the same treatment but I opted to leave the flats polished to a 400 grit finish.

I finished the rifle with an orange kick-eez “trap” recoil pad and a Leupold vx3-i 2.5-8x36 in talley lightweight mounts. The rifle is 6.66 pounds as pictured unloaded.

That's an awesome build! Congrats on such a handy rifle and work as well.

Nice work.

Thanks beretzs. Some final detail photos:

Very nice! How's it shoot for you?

Pretty good so far. I’ve only put 15 rounds through it but I’m liking it. I forgot to adjust the trigger so it was a little heavier than I prefer but it was shooting around a minute off of my tripod and pig saddle. Hoping to get it a little tighter with a trigger adjustment, some load development and a little more trigger time on my end.

Jackalope,

That Rifle really scares me.

If I put one of those together... I think My days of buying and building would be over.

Right Weight, Good Caliber, Beautiful Rifle===> What to do after that?

Thanks for posting the pictures on Your build.

Jerry

Great job, however a little scary. I'd add or subtract an ounce to get away from the 6.66 weight number.

Very nice. Did the bolt pick up some color from the Moly? Only thing I do differently is use steel filings instead of micro balloons for anything around the recoil lug but shouldn't make any difference on the pillar as it shouldn't be a point of recoil contact. Did you use epoxy or Bondo for the checkering?

Well done!

I've got a stable of 6.5s that would just love a little 308 to play with.

Beautiful gun. Thanks for sharing.

It definitely feels right. Not sure I really “need” anything else either! Thanks for the kind words.



I’m hoping to appease the spirits by filling some tags with it.



It seemed to darken it a little bit. I used epoxy to do the filling. Touched up the small spots with evercoat rage filler.

Jackalope-

That turned out quite nicely - good work!

Nice work. Now you need to go put it on a fencepost and take some pictures of it.


Okie John

Great photos and write up on a really nice looking rifle build. Well done and good luck with it.

Very nicely done. The attention to detail is excellent. Could you please explain why you removed the checkering - was it purely for aesthetic reasons?

Both aesthetic and tactile. I just prefer a smooth stock altogether.

Fair enough. Let us know how it performs.

6.66 pounds, i.e., "The Demon"!

Nice work!!

Wow, very impressive! Great looking rifle

Thanks! I found it lying in a spent brass pentagram this morning. I’m sure it’s fine.



Thank you!

Loaded up some 130 TTSXs over 48 grains of TAC. Gonna see how they do this weekend.

Perfection in a nice lt. wt. rifle and a great write up..

How did it go cutting the stock? What type o saw? Backing or fill material?


I have an Edge stock I'd like to trim an inch or so. Just wasn't sure how to go about cutting it with out damaging or attaching new pad.


Great rile BTW!

I just use a good high tension hacksaw with a fine tooth blade. It’s a fairly simple operation. The stocks are filled with a high density foam from McMillan so no need to fill it with anything. I then flatten everything out with an 80 grit belt on my combo belt/disk sander. A good flat block would work too with a little extra effort. You could definitely recycle the current pad, but you’d have to grind it to fit the now smaller stock.

Thanks Jackalope!

Rifle is not a big fan of the 130 TTSXs.

Much better results today. 165 Sierra TGK over 43 grains of Varget. Called the shot that went a little right so I’m happy. This rifle has half the magnification and half the weight of what I’m used to. Much harder to shoot accurately.

I think you’ve got a winner buddy.

How deep were you seating the TTSXs?

Very good looking rifle. You did a great job on it.

Thank you sir. It’s like your pre 64’s little brother. 😂

COAL on the TTSX loads was 2.760”. Shorter than I’d normally load .308 ammunition, but I know the Barnes bullets like some jump. Sierra bullets and Varget is just easy mode for me in .308. That combo has always worked well for me.



Thank you!

I admire your talent and patience.

Beautful work and a great write up. Thanks for taking us along. I like your taste in rifles but if it were a 7mm-08 it would have been perfection, lol!

Thanks guys. I just got another edge in from McMillan. M70 S/A, featherweight barrel, 1-piece bottom metal. Gonna paint it in a flecktarn pattern with the Kuiu Vias color scheme. Hoping to have the black parts of the pattern be the exposed graphite. It’ll be up for grabs in the classifieds when I’m finished, but I’ll post photos here too.

What stock pattern was that first one? Looks great!

It’s also a hunters edge.

The other stock is up in the classifieds. Ended up painting it in a speckle instead of a camo job. Molded in flush cup swivels.

Tag

I love this build, I am in the process of putting something very similiar together, only mine is in .257 Roberts AI. Good Motivation

Color me jealous.

Beautiful work. Mcmillan really outdid themselves with that pillar didn't they?

Great write up on an all around killer rifle looking forward to seeing it/you in some kill shots!

Nice! It’s a handy little rifle. I haven’t found anything to hate about it yet.



I don’t think it would’ve ever been a problem if I didn’t make a mistake, but i was definitely surprised to see how wimpy it was.



Tried to get a coues deer killed with it last week but never did run into any bucks. I tried really hard to will the does to grow antlers but no luck.

Well done all the way around. Good gunwriting has a home here.

Tag

Cut a check for a Barrett Fieldcraft,fast track the chase and connect all dots in regards to RPM,Throat Geometry and COAL.

Hint.......................

Worked on a benelli lately. Picked it up at the pawn shop cheap. Bronze cerakote job, oil finished the wood, polished some parts, replaced some others.

Great work!

Figured I’d finish off the thread. It’s been two years but I finally blooded it.

Very very nice. Are you a gunsmith?

Nah, just like working on guns. Can’t afford to pay anyone to do it!

Well, you're very skilled. Enjoyed it.

May I ask what material you used to fill in the checkering? TIA.

I'm with Tarquin. Also, in terms of time and raw materials cost what would someone be looking at if you don't mind me asking?

Thanks guys. Checkering was filled with Devcon 10110 epoxy.



I probably have about $2000 into the rifle total. The consumables are cheap. Probably $100 total between epoxy, paint and abrasives. Most of it it had left over from doing this stock:



I probably have about 30 hours into it. A lot of that was in wet sanding and filling. I recommend giving it a shot!

I'm happy to hear that it shoots as good as it looks. I have a somewhat related - or maybe not - question: How large is the gap between the front of the Talley base and the scope bell? Just a guess; I'm not asking you to measure it. It looks pretty tight from the pictures.

Thanks

RM

Can you give us a little more detail on how you did the speckled paint job on the Winchester? You said you used Duracoat for the base coat, but how did you get the speckling? Looks very nice. TIA.

It’s about 1/8”. I think the angles make it look a little tighter.



Just turn the PSI down really low on the gun and it’ll spit the speckles instead of spraying a fine mist.

That is exactly the paint job I want to do on a rifle! Can you tell me what colors/paint was used? Getting the colors right on the old woodland camo is a challenge and you nailed it.

Thanks! You can actually get all the right colors from duracoat. Woodland green, woodland brown, woodland tan and matte black. The woodland stencils were from a company called Branson cerakote.

Got it, thanks.

Very cool Jackalope!

Very nice......thanks for the info.

Love it. I'm not a fan of the winchester model 70 only because of the safety. I know thats minor but it's just awkward for me to manipulate.