Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats Ultralightweight stock weights.....FYI.

bsa1917hunter;
Top of the morning to you sir, I hope the day's looking to be a good one down in your part of Oregon and all who matter to you are well.

Thanks for sharing the photos of the Brown Pounder stock on your .338.

While I've worked on at least one Brown stock way back in the day, I don't recall the grip being like the one on yours. I'll make a semi-educated guess that the grip on your .338 feels "just right" as it reminds me of a custom stock a buddy had on a Sako .338. While I've tried to copy the shape from memory a couple times, I never quite got it to feel like my old long gone buddy's felt like.

Upon seeing the second last photo you put up, I thought it looked just like Willy's Sako through the grip.

While he liked to shoot 250gr Sierra in his, I shot at least two mulie bucks and two Okanagan black bears with the 225gr Hornady and was very pleased with the performance.

Thanks for sharing the build and especially thanks for twigging the memories for me.

All the best.

Dwayne

Very.

Ed,
Any more pictures of this one? I’ve not seen a brown with a pistol grip that transitions quite like that.

Those Brown stocks are very impressive as are the Bansners (of which I have a couple). I installed a couple of MPIs on a trio of Ruger M77s back in the day. But I think my next lightweight stock will be a Proof. I think they run 20 oz’s or just under.

I'd like to try one but I've spent a fair amount of time trying to find one.....and no luck yet.

Thanks Dwayne. Yes, that stock is very comfortable. I love the long thin grip. I now have 2 Brown PoundR stocks. Having recently scored a nice one on ebay. It was not advertised as a PoundR, just a "brown precision", but after working on it yesterday I can assure you it is. They are hard to mistake, with their kevlar fibers and are a pain to work on. The reason Brown probably charges so much. Weighed this one yesterday after I received it:

22.4 oz's with .8" Pachmayr decelerator and bedding:


Now, fitted on my Pre 64 300WBY and with my 338 for reference:


New glass bedding should be cured enough to pull the barreled action out and do some clean up and put back together here in a bit. I'll be heading out to the shop and doing that soon.. Have a good day buddy...

Looking good^^ Nice rifle

bsa1917hunter;
Thanks for the reply and further photos.

Wow that's a nice functional looking pair of arms in very useful chamberings too I'm thinking. While I've not shot anything with a .300 Weatherby, I've fooled with a couple back in the day, used a .300 Win Mag for more than a decade and have been using a .308 Norma for about 3 decades - thus I cannot fathom how the .300 Weatherby wouldn't just be more of a good thing so to speak.

Indeed the stock look to be twins don't they?

As you mention the thin grip coming back fairly straight works for more sizes of hands than many other shapes. I don't have big hands but really liked how buddy's felt and as an added bonus it kept my fingers back from getting smacked by the bolt knob and trigger guard too, which I appreciate.

Thanks again and all the best.

Dwayne

I have an old Brown Precision here for a 700 LA. Has a 1" Decelerator and a 1" stock extension to bring it back to 13.5" LOP. It weighs 1lb, 10oz.

It's no super lightweight, but it fits me like a glove and handles well. I've had it on 4 different rifles so far. It will never be sold.

Thanks Dwayne. The 300WBY has been one of my favorite cartridges for a long time now (well since the 90's). Its always seemed to get the job done. There have been some faster cartridges produced, but like Wayne VanZwoll said in one of his articles about the 30 cal magnums, those are generally overkill. Using up too much powder to get a 2-5% increase in velocity. I wish I could find the article, but Wayne really talked the cartridge up a bit. He said something to the effect that it hit like a run away garbage truck with a laser like trajectory. You also mention the 308 Norma magnum. That always seemed like it would be about the perfect 30 cal magnum, so I decided a long time ago that I'd get one eventually. Ended up having one of my old sporter m1917's rechambered for that cartridge. I couldn't be more happy with it. When I was younger I also used the 300wm extensively. I sold everything I had and decided to keep 1 300wm. That ended up being a mistake and I always regretted getting rid of my 300wby and 338wm. So it is likely I will keep this pair for a while. I've taken a nice bull with the 338wm in the brown with red pad PoundR. One thing about that set up is it is light and it mitigates recoil extremely well. It also handles extremely well and the balance is surprisingly good. I'm excited to try out my 300wby with its new stock. I plan on stretching it out to at least 400 yards and see how it does. The wind was blowing pretty good yesterday, so I didn't go shooting. Maybe today will be a better? When I developed the current load for the 300wby, it was showing promise:


I packed that rifle around for almost a week of our first season bull hunt with no luck,

then on the last day, when I had my Tikka 7mm08 in hand, I took a small bull. I'm looking forward to trying the rifle now, as I know my 338wm is very nice to pack around. The 300wby has lost a hair more than a pound with just this stock change. I'm not going to say you need a magnum anything either for elk hunting, as the little 7mm08 with its 140gr TTSX took that bull down quite handily. I guess its nice having the extra horsepower of the 300wby magnum in some cases. It may be a hair better for downrange performance once you get past a certain distance or when the critters are huge and may fight back. The 2 rifles I posted pics of earlier hold 4 in the magazine and 1 in the pipe, so you get some pretty good firepower with them. If I were bear hunting in Alaska, I'd probably have a hard time deciding between the 2. For chidts and giggles, I should load up some 250gr Barnes originals in the 300wby magnum and see how straight they shoot....

How do you take a 40 oz wood stock off say a Model 70 LA, replace it with a 24 oz stock and get it to not be extremely nose heavy without taking about 10 oz off the barrel?

Riflehunter;
Top of the morning to you, I hope that the week was a good one for you overall and this finds you well.

From my experience with doing that on a couple of rifles, I'll try to articulate an answer other than "it depends" - but sometimes it just sorta does.

The walking around rifle I put up with the Wildcat Composites stock started out in a reworked Model 70 stock which I bought off my long passed gunsmithing mentor for $10 because it'd been shortened. I added wood where needed and then modified it to fit a 98 action and it's become what I call my "mule stock" for all of the 98 builds I do. I want to say at least 4 different rifles started out in that stock now.

Anyways it's heavy though perhaps not quite 40oz but likely mid 30oz for sure.

On a Mauser, especially if one is putting on aluminum 2oz bottom metal it does make the rifle more nose heavy, but for me I actually prefer that as I can shoot it off of improvised rests or offhand noticeably faster. That said though, it's still light enough that I can carry it all day up the mountain behind the house and do good work with it in a timely fashion if I actually see something to shoot at. I don't do that with rifles which weigh 10lb and up anymore, though I believe I could when my age started with a 3 instead of a 6.

The walking around rifle started as an '06, then became a .270 with a Featherweight contour barrel and now is a 6.5x55 with a military stepped barrel which added 4oz to the rifle and all of it on the nose. When I shoot it though, I believe I can feel that extra 4oz and it helps my offhand shooting.

Then again if I'd admit to what it cost me to have a 96 barrel bushed, threaded and installed on a 98 action - which I shall not - then you'd perhaps assume I'm just making a poor attempt at justifying the cost of that part of the experiment.... and you could well be right.

Some actions would be less noticeable though I'd think, like the old BBR I had where the bolt weighed 14oz if memory serves.

While I've likely not answered your question completely, I'd say that yes it'll be more nose heavy but again you might shoot it at least as well as before and perhaps better?

Hope that made sense and was useful.

All the best.

Dwayne

Supercub;
Good morning to you my friend, I hope the week was good to you overall and despite what we're dealing with politically up here and that you and yours are well.

With the understanding I'm going off of memory here and not getting off my chair to grab a new Decelerator off the wall of the shop, when I was going down the rabbit hole with both feet I weighed everything on a kitchen scale and it was educational.

As an interesting and somewhat ironic twist, when I did an online search at what a Decelerator weighs, I found the 24Campfire and some fruitcake called BC30cal spouted this nonsense...

https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbt...s/3560463/How_heavy_is_a_Pachmayr_Decele

While I'm not sure if they still have this stuff, years back I picked up a few 1" thick chunks of the stuff which Corlane uses for their mountain rifle builds. Those blanks are a whisker over 1oz and while they're not as soft as a Decelerator they're not too bad either.

Just a thought if you or anyone out there wants to lose 4oz on the recoil pad.

All the best and God Bless.

Dwayne

Great question. Sometimes you end up with a nose heavy POS. That is something to avoid. It's about finding the perfect balance I guess. That makes it so much nicer when packing around in the woods...



You do realize that some factory stocks are a bit too heavy. Like say a pound or more sometimes, right???

I had an 8 1/2 pound rifle, it balanced fine but was 1/2 pound heavier than I wanted. I put a graphite stock on it to get to 8 lbs (which I did) and now it actually feels heavier because it is front heavy. At the moment, I'm getting the barrel contour reduced by .060" to partially restore the balance.

Yeah, that sucks. A lot of the times a featherweight model is better to work with in that regard. In the picture above, the brown painted stock is a factory tupperware stock. I much prefer those to most wood stocks. I had a bad experience once with a 30-06 classic sporter when I put it in a Bansner. The rifle felt top heavy as hell and I hated it. Ended up selling the Bansner and putting the tupperware stock back on it. That rifle was actually one of my favorite rifles. Set up very similarly to my new $500 7mm rem mag in the tupperware stock shown above. I also tried putting my pre 64 375H&H in a lighter stock. What a mistake!! Then when putting it in a Mcmillan swirly, which is not light by any means at all, all was much better. Even though the rifle was heavier, it packed much better because you were not fighting it because it was properly balanced:


My best suggestion is, if a rifle feels great in the hands, don't F it up over 1/2 pound. It's generally not worth it. Now, in the case of my new Brown PoundR, I knew that was going to be a perfect match for my model 70 because I already have one on a 338wm. Those are damned near perfect for me. YMMV..

Yeah, throwing a heavy azzed barreled rifle in a super light stock is sometimes a mistake. You end up having to do something to correct that mistake. Either by cutting the barrel, turning some of the meat off, or just replacing the barrel. One rifle I had that had a crap stock on it from the get go was my BACO Extreme Weather 30-06. I had a Mcmillan hunters compact edge stock at my door before that rifle showed up. Damned near perfect match, but keep in mind the barrel profile is already light and it is fluted to save some weight as well..:

Any lightweights for a Savage 10?? McM Edge is not a lightweight after they get done reinforcing it for the Savage. I can't seem to find anything current from Brown.

Is it a Trophy hunter?

I was looking for a stock for my Featherweight, several outfits had stocks for M70's but not for the thinner contour of the Featherweight. McMillan had one and was told it weighed ~ 24 oz. I decided to weigh the factory stock and much to my surprise it weighs just under 26 oz (with pad)- not too shabby



I believe this is at least part of the reason