Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats Mauser build for my son

Midway has some. Is on YouTube for gunsmithing Mausers including making a hinged.floorplate.

Well, I thought I might update in case folks were trying to follow along. I haven't got much work done, I'm doing this almost totally on weekends, and we have spent the last 3 weekends busy with other things. We headed out of town going west one weekend to visit son at college, the next weekend we headed east out of state to visit another son and daughter in law and our grand baby. Last weekend was busy with just catching up on chores around the place.

I have done a few small things, mostly on the stock, sanding here and there, working on the grip cap and a few other little things. Somewhere things got a little off track, nothing specific but little things add up. The 'cross bolts' for one, Im not happy with them. the inletting for the bottom metal also, shows a couple gaps. Likewise the inletting around the rear tang on top, small gap that to me looks horrible. It's not that by and of themselves they are horrible, but fixing them will show a bit and its the total package I'm grading here.

Overall I'm getting frustrated with how it looks....I'm seriously considering getting another stock. I am sometimes the laziest and most unconcerned person you might meet, at other times it's like OCD kicks in and perfection is the only acceptable outcome. In this case the selective OCD is making my eye twitch, I think because this is for someone else and not myself. In fact if i get another stock for this rifle for my son I'm sure I'll use this one for me. It's good enough for me, not for me to give someone else.

It's not like I'm giving up on a spectacular stock, or that it was great expense. I've had this one for over 20 years. And I'll probably get another from Richards so the expense isn't too great there either.

Pretty much made up my mind. I'll keep working on the metal a bit and get another stock on order. If folks are interested I will keep updates going when I get back to it.

will be watching for updates.

I'm beyond interested. Please do keep this thread updated if it's not too much of a pain. This is what this forum SHOULD be.

Love this thread, wish there were more like it.

I'm back at it

I did order a new stock, again from Richards Microfit. I'm happy with it. I would love feedback from folks here though. I know that grading wood is a very subjective thing, having said that I would love to know how you would grade this Claro Walnut stock, it is the Old Classic style:




I will tell you how it was graded in a later post, I won't leave you hanging. I will say again I'm happy, and I'm a big boy so feel free to say you don't like it if you feel that way. I'm looking for honest opinions and grading. Richards has the following grades listed on their website:
-Economy
-Standard
-Select
-Semi-fancy
- Grade "A" fancy
Grade "AA" fancy
-Grade "AAA" Extra fancy
-Exhibition grade

The reason I'm asking is that I was able to find very little on the internet about Richards, lots of it negative, but lots of it from a few years in the past. I have used Richards several times and have always been satisfied. I just thought it might be a fun exercise to compare what we think the wood grades against what Richards grades it. The thing about Richards is you don't get to pick your individual blank, you only get to choose wood type (Claro, Black, English etc) and wood grade as listed above. I am curious and thought it might help someone else in the future to sort of align our expectations with what they grade.

I'd call it standard, because of the knots.

I've used Richard's they're always more work than I want. I bought an Exhibition Grade Carlo Walnut from their seconds list. It never made it past bedding. Trying to pop the action out it broke through the rear action screw hole and had a two piece stock of higly figured wood. GS felt horrible about what happened, if I buy from their seconds list now 99% of the time it's a laminate.

I bet they graded it "A".

That looks like a nice blank, has a bit of color contrast, bet you will have some fiddleback in the finished stock.
The bad... as been mentioned the knots lower it a couple grades.
So I call it Select grade
It will make a good stock for a working gun

I've used three stocks from Richard's and haven't had a problem with any of them. The one pictured below was ordered for a project much like yours; family heirloom rifle passed down to my son from his great grandfather, stock was too short by almost 2" for him so we ordered a new one. It's one of their Factory Seconds, graded AA by Richard's, less the fill spot and knot which I expected as a Second. I'll guess they graded yours A.

I going to admit a couple things. First thing is that I almost deleted this thread and started again since I started with another stock. But that wouldn't be the right thing to do. I thought about deleting this because I was upset on how my stock was coming out, it was on a bit of a downward spiral. In all honesty it's not really that bad, but it's not what I was wanting for this project. The second thing I'm going to admit is that I'm not a talented as I want to think and as some people may think I am.

Here's how things went wrong, I tried to copy the excellent work of too many other stock makers. I looked at so many photos of fine custom guns, and stocks and thought 'oh i like that feature' and 'I'm going to do that detail'. Bottom line is the things I had in my mind were not coming out right to my eye. That and the totality of the things I was doing, and doing not quite as good as I had seen them done by others, was making everything look bad to me. So I reset.....and I'm so glad I did!

The stock shown above is a Claro Walnut "Old Classic Style" from Richards. I called and was able to talk to them to find out if they had any seconds in stock that might be able to ship sooner than starting from scratch. Also, seconds are discounted because of flaws. This is a second, but was graded a "A Fancy". I like the grain and coloration on this one, I do wish it had some figure but I'm satisfied. The knots I can live with, and in fact really don't bother me at all. The fact that the defects brought the price down by about half makes it even easier to accept.

The inletting on this stock is soooo much better than the previous one. My foggy memory can't recall exactly what that stock was, but I'm almost sure from looking at it is not Claro, and from working on it I'm almost sure was not 99% inlet. This new one is. The inletting required only very minor scraping to get it done, mostly in the barrel channel to deepen it, the shape was great. One 'issue' was that after getting it bottomed out in the inletting, it still sat a bit proud. I did take down the shelf that the bottom of the action sits on and now it's great. I'm doing some work on the outside, mainly grip area and getting the tang flush.

I'll update with pics after working on it in the shop tomorrow.

Looks like Richards has upped it's game with the inletting, I haven't used them in years, I remember them being a lot of work.
I think that will be a fine stock when finished

They have, and the general overall quality of their stocks has improved as well.

Their site is much better than the old one.
Is it just me or does their "Safari" style have a bit more drop to the butt than their "Old Classic" ?

I’m following this thread closely. So far your work has looked amazing. I don’t doubt you’ll have the new stock where you’re wanting it in time. I put a classic Boyd’s stock on an ‘03 Springfield that cracked the original Bishop stock it came with and it’s not anywhere near as nicely figured as yours. Just wish I knew how to checked now.

I got it right!

Nothing to ashamed about hitting the reset button. I think it happens more often than guys will admit. It also doesn't ruin the project.

We often fail to consider the amount of 'try and try again' that lives and breaths under a fine piece of woodwork. One that catches the eye immediately and begs the hand to touch and feel. Even if this were your 12th attempt...you'd be on the right path, and I'm speaking from experience in other forms of woodworking. Thanks for keeping this thread alive. It's a fine catalog of a process filled with pride in the work, a process most of us would fail to show because of 'man-card style pride' and all that horse malarkey.

Very fun thread. Thank you!

let me show you what I was able to get done this weekend.

For grins I wanted to weigh the stock before i did any work on it. I put it on my digital scale and it came out to 2lbs, 14.8oz. almost 3 pounds of walnut.



First a little about the inletting. I saw this method somewhere else and used it and it works great. I 'paint' the area of the metal im working on inletting with a dry erase marker. Its not near as messy as inletting black and in my opinion safer than a candle or oil lamp.


After getting the dry erase on, just put it in the stock and give a good whack with a wooden mallet. You can see that very little of the wood in the action area needed to be removed:


I used red on the barrel:


I'm trying to show here which way to use the chisel to cut very shallow.


Overall I'm really happy with the quality of inletting from Richards. I only have 3 areas I may want to do something about. First is the area around the front screw hole in the bottom metal. The inletting from Richards got a little out on this:


The second area is on the top of the stock, just behind the receiver and under the safety shroud:


The third area I don't have a photo of yet, but it's the area just in front of the bolt release on the side. The part that would be the little piece left between the release and the thumb cut out. I'll get a pic. I wish it were a bit longer back toward the release. As it it there won't be much wood left there. Not sure if i want to try to add a bit to give it more to see or do away with that little raised portion all together.

After getting the action and bottom metal inletted, I started on the outside with the grip and wrist of the stock. As sent from Richards the end of the grip where the grip cap would be had some extra on it. First stop was to go back to my dad's place and cut that. In order to make it smooth and even I used the front magazine screw hole and the trigger slot cut out itself to pass some screws through and into a 2x4 piece of scrap using some large fender washers to hold it snug. The 2x4 have me a flat area to rest on the bandsaw table. I lined up the cut and carefully cut the dingus off the pistol grip:

Then back to my shop. I marked the flat of the grip area as I lined up from both ends of the stock. Using that straight line I drilled the pilot holes 1/8" and mounted the grip cap. You can see how much is left to take off the grip all around:



With chisels, files and sandpaper I pretty much got the grip shaped. Still a lil finish work to to on it:


after I had the grip cap placed and the grip shaped, I reinforced the wrist with a piece of all-thread and epoxy like I had done with the previous stock.

That's pretty much where it sits now. Updates as I get them done, still mostly on weekends when we're not heading to Arkansas to visit the grandbaby.