On the wood...
It is probably American grown English out of California. Shane Thompson had a career as a gunbuilder, but has largely left the trade to provide more financial security to his family. He lives about 2 hours north of me. I went through his collection of blanks and pulled out several. I like blanks where the figure arcs down to the toe of the butt--nothing structural, I just like that look. I also chose "left handed" blanks--where the better figure is on the left side where you can see it better because the detail of the cheekpiece is not competing with it. I think I ended up paying $1600 for four blanks, so they were not cheap by any means.
When I got to the point of having the blank duplicated off my pattern, I carried three different blanks out to D'Arcy, who was doing the work for me. At one stage in his career, he did a lot of stock duplicating for other gunsmiths to generate cash flow between his own projects. He has cut perhaps hundreds of blanks and can anticipate what the finished stock is likely to look like. Some blanks end up looking better than the outside appearance might indicate, and others not so much. He looked at the blank that became this stock and said "this one will punch above its weight." This is one of lucky Easter eggs, it appears.
It is the best piece of wood I have had the good fortune to build a stock from, and I will say that it made me nervous to work with because I did not want to ruin it.
