Taipan What would you do with this Taipan cheekpiece and scope ring combination?

[MushroomPsyche]

I agree the cheek piece and stock don't look good together. If you want to keep it I would probably paint it black. Unless you can find a scrap of the same laminate and make a new one I think making it much less visible is the best alternative. Thin wood pieces tend to be delicate too. To get the appearance of wood it's possible to glue a veneer (some is paper backed, some is sticky so it adheres itself) to a plastic or metal piece. But unless you can find veneer of a red laminate it won't match well either.

The wood being thin and delicate is actually one of the reasons why I don't want to dedicate an expensive set of scope rings for it. Even if I paint it black, if in the future I break it, I can't just buy this part. Just a wrong move and get the back end of the cheekpiece to catches on something, it could leverage off from the receiver. There is about a millimeter thick piece of metal underneath which the wood is glued on. This metal piece is what the bolts are holding on to. Leveraging off the back end, I can see the wood breaking away from the metal piece.