Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats MPI or Bansner stocks?

Concur in spades...

You are WRONG in the extreme. I took the above photograph when I was at the Colorado School of Trades in 2005(on Darcy Echols' recommendation fwiw). I have/had NO axe to grind and simply found it amazing that anyone would build a stock like that... And no I have never worked for MPI nor do I know "doc".

The instructors said they went with MPI because it was the worst synthetic on the market and required the most effort on behalf of the gunsmith. I had led a sheltered life shooting/bedding McMillans and found it to be a grand waste of time and epoxy. It comes down to how much time and epoxy you want to put in a substandard stock. If you like them by all means use them...

Who came up with the "ex-employee" angle?

Matt Garrett.

Mickey Coleman said the same thing..

Matt,

Are you saying the stock came from MPI with the sticks already on it??

I had a competent gunsmith install mine and will soon be getting another MPI for my 30 Gibbs. They fit me and handle better than the other Walmart stock you guys are so fond of.

Matt in Va,

I stand corrected then. There was another pic of an MPI stock floating around for a year or so and I thought this was the same one. My mistake. With that one, some guy got fired for logging extra hours, got mad and circulated the picture. I was told that by the guy who was currently doing the bedding for them.

Every blank that I have ordered from them has been great IMO, and no sticks to speak of. I would freak if something like that was sent to me though!

I thought the locker in the background looked familiar, I graduated from CST in 1999. Where are you in Va?

I am not. I asked the fellow working on the stock and he said that is what he found when he went through the exterior. I found it difficult to believe, however, the fellow was a former Ranger and had no nonsense attitude. In short in the year and 4 months I knew him he did not give me a reason to question his veracity.

My issue with the stocks, quite honestly, was looking at what you started with and what it took in material and time to come out with, respectively, at best a marginal end product. Compared to a properly bedded and cleaned up McMillan.

No doubt you can make them look like a decent stock, however, unless time and epoxy are free it does not make economic since or lead to a first class end product...imho

Regards, Matt.

Thanks for the reply Matt, but arent you comparing Mcmillans drop in to a MPI stock blank?

The other thing is that all stocks made from Kevlar are a royal PTA to fit and finish. McMillian stopped making the KS stocks for Remington because of this.
If a 24 oz. McMillian Edge will suit you, fine. I really like my 18 oz. MPI's. Allows me to use steel for other critical parts w/o going over my target weight for the rifle.
BTW, that "crappy" MPI is probably a little older than 2005. My first MPI was made about 2007 and it has no such stuff in it. The guy that put it together for my rifle, had been using them with a better record for durability than the famous Brown Pounder for a couple of years before that. E

I would think it's pretty obvious from looking at the sticks are molded in. I would think they only way to do that is have access to the mold.

Terry

Terry, I thought it was obvious the sticks were glued on and bonded over

I'm sorry, but I know Doc personally and I know that he would not put a blank out with popsicle sticks in it. That is just rubbish. If that did come from MPI, I'm sure that they would replace the stock, apologise profusely and get a new on out to you. Someone would be fired.

You can't really compare the two. A McMillan is darn near a finished product. Skim bed, and out the door. An MPI blank is a shell to be custom fit, cut and finished to the customers bbld action. Yes there is more work involved and that is expected. MPI's are not drop in stocks, period.

Full disclosure: I am a McMillan dealer.


I have finished and bedded a LOT of stocks, and I concur wholeheartedly with the notion that it is a false economy to take a blank and finish it yourself. It may be worth it for FUN, or for a LEARNING EXPERIENCE, or for personal satisfaction, or for any other number of reasons. Yes. So I have no beef with those that do (I enjoyed the ones I did!).

But from a purely economic standpoint?

Consider ... A Bansner blank (I still own a 600 with a Bansner I worked myself) is $252 at Brownells ... raw. Add $38 for a Decelerator, $20 for pillars, and $28 for an AcraGlas gel kit (because you WILL have to bed in the barrel channel) and a few bucks for shipping.

We'll assume you have an appropriate saw, grinding wheel or belt sander, various grades of sandpaper, 20-mil plumber's tape, masking tape, some filling compound like Bondo, and some SuperGlue (for gluing on the pad), a dremel, mask, etc.

Not including all that stuff, you're at $350-ish for materials WITHOUT PAINT.

An EDGE in the Gear Shop is $543 delivered. That comes professionally painted with Polane, with an installed Decelerator at your LOP, studs, and installed pillars. Fit and finish will be stellar, AND you have a lifetime guarantee.

So you're looking at about a $200 difference. For that, you need to cut the stock to length and install and grind down a pad, properly fit the barreled action, prep, and pillar bed tip to tang. Clean up bedding job, then fill in voids, prep for paint, degrease, tape off and spray.

Oh, and good luck comparing any OTC paint to the Sherwin Williams Polane T McMillan uses ($90/gallon last time I checked!) Trust me on that one. I've painted a few.

And then you have to decide if the finished product is on par with the quality of a custom-drop-in McMillan EDGE. I'll leave the determination to others, as my opinion is certainly not economically detached.

If I was going to tackle that project, I'd set aside a weekend, but I'm finicky, a perfectionist, and I like to take my time. Those with more skills than I have could likely do it in much less time.

Not that RickBin needs corroboration but I have seven McMillans (6 bought used), two MPI's(one from Doc and one bought used) and five Bansners( mix of new and used). I like the Bansners because of my small hands but they cost as much as the McMillans new if you hire the finish work done. I am happy with my two MPI's but they need lots of work to finish as do the Bansners. McMillans are virtually drop ins.

Have finished out only one MPI ... for a good reason. The blank was less than inpressive ... very,very crude workmanship. Turned out OK after a fair amount of work but I have not been tempted to repeat the process.

A Bansner I am currently fitting to a Model 70 is fairly well done. If you have a bit of glass working skill it is no problem to clean the High Tech up.

Wow. The pop-sick-L Stick stock is back. Knowing what I do about MPI Stocks, and some of the students that have "added their own special touch" to project stocks, at the Colorado School of Trades. I will still have to throw a BS flag on the picture. I have seen studends epoxy 5 lbs of white pine to an MPI Stock to make cheek rests, wide forends, and more. I have also seen them use other items, like in the pics, to " stiffen" the stock, or add weight. Most have never worked with fiberglass before, and were allowed, by their instructors, to do some very stupid things. I have installed several hundred MPI Stocks, ranging from 9 1/2 oz. graphite kevlar blanks to 5lb. 8X laminated glass blanks for the 577 Tyranisaur. NO popsycle sticks, sorry. The standard fiberglass stocks have a piece of wood epoxied in the bottom of the nose, and butt, for conventional and QD sling stud instalation. The light weight stocks can be had with a small alluminum pad, epoxied in, for tapping a machine thread, sling stud in, to save weight.The stocks can be custom built, about any way you want them, for about any make or model of rifle. Call your favorite stock maker and ask about a 15oz. light weight stock for a Kliengunther, or Colt Sauer. Then if you realy want, or need one, call Doc at MPI. If you do not have the skill level required, for the instalation, you can send your rifle in and have as much or as little done, as you need.
Oh, by the way. Why did the guy, that took the cool pictures remove the fiberglass shell, from the stock? Was he going to glue a 2X4 on for a cheek rest?
I will stop now and save some, for another post. Thanks Rick

The sticks look to be accra glassed to the outside of the stock, from the picture.

Good points, Rick, as far as they go.
My first MPI was a replacement to a McMillian FWT for a Winchester 70 FWT. McMillian had assured me that, especially by adding 2-4 ozs. of graphite to the stock, that I could use a shooting sling and the stock wouldn't bend at the forend. Well, even with the added graphite, it bent so bad when using a shooting sling, it wasn't useable with one. That was about $450 and almost five months of waiting down the drain. I had the McM stock sold for $150.
The MPI, finished, and installed by a pro took 3.5 weeks. Total cost was $410. Above all, it works perfectly with a shooting sling. And a full 12 ozs. lighter.
I know of only one such MPI stock that developed a hair line surface crack on one rifle. It was replaced under the guarantee by the rifle maker, repaired and resold to a guy that's very happy with it. That in comparison a several dozen installed by the same guy that have had no problems
McMillians are fine stocks. I recommend them myself and still use two. But even the very expensive Edge stocks have problems. We had one here that split on the inside of the action area. So nobody is perfect. E

A current word of caution abut MPI is to double check his weight estimates and make sure he has upgraded from the postal scale that was in his office.