I couldn’t wait for the FX Walnut stocks and I had a little different idea of what I wanted my stock to look like . I have a GRS Dreamline which I I love the feel in hand every time I pick it up. But once you set the length of pull and the height of the comb it pretty much never gets changed for hunting purpose’s. I had a special curly maple stock blank I was given by a deceased friend that I was waiting for the right gun to stock with it. I laid out the pattern using elements of the GRS grip and the DRS cheek pad shape. Unfortunately when cutting away the perimeter I cut on the wrong line at the top of the forearm. I cut the line which represented the bottom of the barrel. Oh well I wasn’t going to throw this wood away so I glued it back the best I could and moved on. Inletting this action and barrel was so easy compared to most rifle actions being that it was all straight parallel lines, perfect to do in my vertical milling machine. I had it all done in about 3 hours. But next came the shaping. I used a grinding tool with an aggressive cupped wheel from Harbor Freight. Man that thing removes wood fast. The hardest thing I found in the whole process was final sanding. Maple wood is light in color so it does not show scratches . I had to stain it to reveal them and it took me along time of sanding to finally get them out. I left a reveal of 1/4” past the plentum which gives the rifle a look like a Rigby big bore rifle. I’m going to 3 D print or machine a floor plate for it . Im hoping that a medium size plentum is made for this platform . it is amazing how this stock has transformed this rifle from the synthetic stock . It looks and handles so differently. The wood was a soft silver maple which is light in weight. It only added 4 ounces over the synthetic stock. I used the recoil pad from the original stock. I’ll probably do a stippling pattern on the forearm later to hide the cement line along with something in the grip as well. These pictures are with only two coats of an oil finish. It will get another four or five more to properly fill to a glass smooth satin finish.
