Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Winchester Collectors Pre 64 assembly issue with Boyd's stock ??

Hello All,

I'm building up a 1953 M70 action into a 458 Win Mag. Have the new barrel fitted to the action, bought a Boyd's Heritage laminated stock.
The inletting appears fine and the barreled action seems to fit well.

However, the front and rear action screws have very little engagement in the action. One of the attached pictures is the rear action screw,
the front screw is blind but sure doesn't feel like there are many threads engaged.

The mag box is correctly fit up into the receiver. As the photo shows, the bottom of the box sits above the bottom of the stock by .090" or so.
This, plus the fact that both action screws seem "short", lead me to believe that possibly the stock is too "thick", since the trigger guard
and magazine floorplate seem to fit their inlets well.

The bolt operates perfectly, although I have not cycled any ammo through it yet (need to buy some).

How much of a problem is this ? Will longer action screws suffice ?

Is the barreled action seated into the stock fully ( half depth)? If the action isn’t fully inletted and the bottom metal inlet is a little shallow the. Maybe the combination is causing the issues?

Geometry is off somewhere if standard length action screws are not long enough

I have my opinion of Boyd's Drop In stocks. Anything made to fit everything fits nothing perfectly.

The action looks like it may need to go deeper by nearly 1/8" except for the tang resting on top of the wood. You may need to sand the stock down from the top if the action is indeed seated to the proper depth the bottom wood on the stock needs sanded down to match the magazine box. The box should be pretty darn close to flush with the wood. Try some inletting black (or red lipstick) on the flat behind the recoil lug and see if there is contact with the stock.

You can bolt the barreled action into the stock and take side view pics of both sides to help.determine if it's inletting depth or stock thickness.

FWIW, the several Boyd's I've seen with this hasn't been because the inletting wasn't 'deep' enough. The usual issue is with the depth of the stocks.

On yours, since the extra depth isn't too excessive, the best solution is some longer action screws cut to length. Having some clearance at the botton of the mag box isn't a bad thing.

Good shootin' -Al

Thanks Gents.

I'm going to fiddle with it some more. I'd rather not unscrew the barrel.

It feels fairly solid as is, if it comes to slightly longer action screws I guess that's not the worst thing.

No need to remove the barrel for anything....

Well my thought was, I could check the barrel inlet separately from the action inlet,
maybe help narrow down the spot of interference.

The barrel has to go back on in exactly the same rotation.