Well, my new stock from Pecatonica River Long Rifle Supply came in the other day. What a disappointment! I had ordered a grade 3 curly maple stock for my Hawken. It didn't have as much curl as I thought it should. And it was 98% inletted. I even paid an extra $25 to have them fit my butt plate to the stock.
Here are the problems I ran into besides the grain/grade.
1. I installed the butt plate and found it had about 1/16" excess wood all around it. Took about 2 hours of sanding to get a good wood/metal fit while still maintaining the contour of the stock.
2. I had to reshape the tang (expected) due to the difference in drop of comb vs the T/C stock and installed tang.
3. Had to mill out barrel channel for barrel lug and for wedge pin in area previously inletted for eustasions. Oh yeah, had to take the larger eustations off the Renegade and swap them out. Installed barrel and noted lug did not line up with wedge pin slots. Barrel too far forward about 1/4" off.Noted hole for ramrod was off center.
4. Removed barrel and installed lock and replaced barrel. Hammer 1/4" too far back of center from nipple.
5. OK - solution; Painstakingly inletted rear of barrel channel and tang back 1/4". (What a job with hand tools.). Had to put epoxy in existing tang screw holes wait a day and redrill. (will know better not to drill any holes next time until all fitting is done.)
Finally got everything put together to make sure all fit properly. Only other minor thing is that forearm is a bit thicker than the Hawken and the wedge pin does not protrud but is just long enough. And the lock screw was also too short to engage the lock. Luckily I found a maching screw that fit the threads and blued it.
I have 3 coats of TruOil on the stock now. A couple more coats and reassembly and I'll be taking it to the range. I'll have about 30 hours into this stock.
Will post pics when complete probably Saturday. But Pecatonica will be getting a call today telling them all the problems I had. I think they should at least give me reimbursement for the $40 difference between grade 2 and 3.
__________________ PLEASE NOTE THAT DUE TO THE RISING COST IN AMMO PRICES I WILL NO LONGER BE FIRING A WARNING SHOT.
A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have.
I'm not as good as I'm gonna get - but I'm better than I used to be. "Life without God is like an unsharpened pencil - it has no point."
New stock came in
