DM

Of the 3 choises mentioned here's my take on it...

Laminate... My complaint is they are heavy.... There's no getting around it, there's a lot of glue in them.. (i've made them myself)

Wood... Looks beautiful if it's dried properly in the first place and sealed it is stable...

Synthetics... They are stable, and pretty much bullet proof.. I like the way they seem to absorb some felt recoil. I've noticed it on several different rifles when compared side by side with wood stocks.

Now, here's my complaint with them... When you walk through the brush and a limb or ? touches one, it makes a completely different noise than if the same limb rubs on a wood stock. Animials are use to wood on wood, they aren't use to wood on sythetics... I've actually had it happen a couple times just after i started useing synth... stocks that the animial was alerted because of it. I didn't quite get what was alerting them at first, but then i noticed the noise difference myself. After that i got a lot more carefull when i was in brush useing a synthetic stock...

DM

shepdogwv

I know that when wood stocks are exposed to extreme (cold or moisture i forget) they can warp and change the poi. I was just wondering if having them glass bedded and the barrel free floated gets rid of this variable? I have a remington 700 BDL.

Duckbutter48

Yes if bedded and floated properly it takes the problem of warping away. The whole purpose of floating the barrel is that if the wood warps it still doesnt touch barrel. Same basic thing with bedding the action. It keeps thing in place no matter what the wood does.

I have all 3 types and think different guns and situations call for different stocks.
I likethe nice heavy Laminate on my 300wby and my 22-250 since I dont really use them as carry guns thru the woods since I have better calibers more suited for that job. I usually use those as stand guns or set up for ground hogs.

I like synthetic on my stainless Encore because its the gun I take out no matter what the weather is and usually during MLoader season it seems like the weather gets crappy. Plus I take it on hunting trips so even if it pours rain all day its easy to clean.

I like wood on the guns I could stare at all day like my A-bolts and on guns that I use for walking thru the woodshuntingsince they just feel better when you shoulder them in a hurry. Just my 2 cents.

trailer

Ditto...

Josh Sorensen

I've always liked the performance of synthetic stocks, light and durable, but I recently purchased a stock from accurate inovations. it is free floated and has afull aluminum bedding block to aviod the warping problem. I'm going to give it a try this year and see how it holds up. I was surprised how light the stock was too. I thimk it might be even lighter than the factory synthetic stock. So far I'm pretty impressed with it.

Here it is on my 300 win mag


http://www.accurateinnovations.com/