This is a 1951 HVA FN 30/06 that I just completed and gave to my brother-in-law. With it he killed a nice muley buck last week while my wife and I watched.

It was a pawn shop score--birch stock, some dings in the metal, very dirty. Got it for $300. The metal cleaned up well with some stoning, new trigger, sweated off the front ramp (rear sight was missing, I plugged it.) I did the stock from the blank. This is my third complete stock, second done from the blank. It's a piece of bastogne that a good friend from California cut. Its one-sided but perfectly quarter sawn and laid out.

I'd like to publicly thank member Bob Beyer for giving me the milling head that made it possible for me attempt rough milling the inletting. Many months ago I posted wondering about mills, drill presses etc for use in milling wood. Bob e-mailed me offering to give (!) me an older Bridgeport m-head, he even shipped it. I tore it down and cleaned it, added a VFD 3-phase converter (very slick package for those of you with old 3 phase equipment around) and built a mill around it with mostly materials I had on hand. The table is made of the riser and riser flange from an old industrial drill press and I added a cheap x y table (I'll need to upgrade that eventually.) You get some chatter in metal if you work too quickly but for wood it works great. Likely makes the true machinists cringe to see it but with a new house and wife I simply can't afford a mill of any sort of mill and this certainly works as well as any drill press. Thank you Bob for your generosity.

Some pics of the project:

Roughing in:



Inletting bottom:



Inletting top:


Inletting complete (my wife's apparently glad about that)


Finished left side:


Finished right side.

nice work and very creative.....Ya just gotta love it...

You folks in Montana sure know how to do things...

Congratulations.

Snowcat,

An outstanding job on your brother's Husky, and a good job to you on building the milling machine and its support equipment.

Thank you for posting the photos...jim

Very nice job!

Excellent, wish I had your talent.

Very nice. I am envious of your skills. You are a fine craftsman.

You certainly have some talent.

Exceptional, snowcat!

No mill, so you build one.

Talk about ground up.

Sweet inletting job.

Nice profile to the stock, and... a red recoil pad.

I'd guess you're pretty popular with your in-laws!!!

Well done,

flaco

Just one question:

After all that work, how could you part with it?

You are truly a saint.

LOL.

Beautiful job Jay, along with a bunch of the other guys I wish I had your talent working with wood. I can turn a lumber yard into a pile of sawdust in a day. Along with the job you did on the stock the wood itself is a really nice piece of wood. Congrats, I am certainly glad to see that mill head being put to good use. I doubt if anyone could have used more skillfully. If that is the new bride holding the gun, I would say that your taste in women is as good as it is in guns. She is a beautiful girl. Thanks for the pics. really great. Being unfamilier with mule deer I have to ask, is the buck in the pic. that you emailed me as big as I think it is. Sure looks like a giant to me. Congrats again, super job. Its after midnight here so if you don't mind I will answer your email in the next day or so. I am getting ready to head to Fla. for the winter and this place is a madhouse. Talk soon, Take care of yourself and the little beauty.

nicely done!

Very classy indeed. You have done well

Very nice!

Nice rifle, nice looking lady holding said rifle.

Good job on both!

I can never seem to figure out when to tell women that I am a rifle loony.

Hey Bob, Darn nice of you to send the Head to Snowcat.

Hey Snowcat, Absolutely wonderful job with the "Montana Bridgeport". Sure came out well.

I agree with everyone else. Great looking rifle and great looking Lady.

One question though. I am just curious as to why you chose not to add a cheekpiece on the rifle? Or don't I see it in the photo for some reason?

Absolutely beautiful rifle. Sincere congratulations to you and your Mrs.

Thats a very nice looking rifle !!

Excellent SC.

Snowcat

If you have a few minutes, I wouldn't mind hearing a little bit about how you planned and went about making that stock. What was your thought process. Where did you start. What was your reference point. What steps did you take. I think all of that would be interesting to hear.

1) Amazing feat of ingenuity ... make the tool ... then make the thing! Conmgratulations are in order.

2) Lovely finished product.

3) I Second the request from 22WRF for insight into your thought processes.

Thank you for posting the nice work!

Thanks for the encouragement guys. My brother in law built us a gorgeous cedar strip canoe for our wedding which made it a little easier to part with the HVA but when you spend as much time working a rifle over and stocking it, and you're a gun nut, parting is such sweet sorrow...

I will, someday, find another FN of that quality for myself. The action was beautiful, barrel was trim and it shot very well, just a gorgeous piece of work.

22WRF--You're correct, no cheekpiece. The goal of this project was to make a trim, fast handling mountain rifle. I thought that the cheekpiece might add unnecessary bulk to the lines. I'll admit to being a little intimidated by making them also. You've got to understand that I have only made two complete stocks and inletted another--not a bunch of experience.

You asked about my thought process, I'll do my best. I began with Jerry Fisher's general stock profile for the 98--I have one of his full size schematics. I cut a mycarta pattern based on his drawing and decided that I wanted to open the grip slightly, seems to me to point more quickly that way, and I narrowed the forend significantly to less than double barrel diameter and rounder in profile than his. I really like trim stocks for some reason though I have very large hands--something like some of the early M54's and light Mannlichers I've handled. I also like a trim wrist--this wood was extremely dense and the grain flow was good so I thought I could get away with it. I made a mistake and did a straight comb and placed the nose where it felt good to me---problem was that the cocking piece hit it with all the slop inherent in the M98 design. The scope came to the eye perfectly with low mounts as is so I'm not sure how to deal with this in the future. I have one of Mel Smart's stocks that is lower at the comb nose than at its heel which works but looks off to me.
I worked in 1/4" castoff into this originating at the rear guard screw-- I'm not sure if this actually helps bring the gun to bear quicker but because I know its there I think it does. LOP was slightly short at 13 1/4" due to the fact that most of our hunting is done with heavy clothing on up here.

I knew that the forend would be trim in this one so I left the ebony tip a bit longer, seemed to help the lines.

I kept the flats about 1/16" around the bottom metal.

I really recontoured the action tang alot, much thinner, and rounded out the guide groove so that the cocking piece didn't catch. I only needed a shadow of a cut in the wrist where the stock meets tang and cut slight radii out from the notch to continue those lines.

I like simple stock lines an so did not make a pedestal for the ejector box, just made the side flush with the box and radiused the wood away fore and aft with enough of a flat on top of each to show that I was deliberate about things.

I used the Chem-pak satin custom oil aerosol finish. Not romantic but this stuff is amazing. Beautiful and extremely tough. I've got it on my user rifle which has seen hundreds of miles in the backcountry and it's holding up incredibly well. I did relieve and glass in the ring/lug and tang, again, not classic but very pratical. Permalyn sealed the rest of the inletting.

FINALLY (I know this is windy) I had to build up the front of the magazine box. It seemed to me that in order to get a tight fit of action to stock you had to make the stock slightly deeper than the action b/c with a Mauser the "pillar" is built into the action and could float, ie, the action screws could be tight but the action could still move in the stock. But when I put everything together I had a slight gap between the front of the magazine box and the action that the plastic (sharp) tips of the Accubonds would catch in and inhibit feeding. Weld and file and problem solved. There must be a better solution though. I'm thinking of grinding off the bottom metal pillar on my next Mauser project and installing a true alluminum pillar in the stock to pull the action against, thoughts?

I know I need to learn to checker....

Next project: 375 Whelen AI with a steel Beisen plate and cap, schnable forend. I'll likely do a shadowline cheek piece on this one. Screw it up...rasp it off, right?

Thanks again for the kind words.

Very very nice, wonderful profile, looks like it fits the hand well.


.........the rifle's not bad either!!!!

sorry couldn't resist

the chef

Snowcat

I think you would enjoy owning and reading David Wesbrook's book entitled Professional Stockmaking. Maybe you could get "Santa" to track down a copy for you for Christmas.

With regard to that problem with the slight gap, it sounds like you maybe didn't inlet the action deep enough. I had a smith tell me that he took a measurement of the radius of the front ring and inletted that front ring exactly 1/2 of its radius and then spotted in the bottom metal to just kiss the top metal.

Snowcat, I only know enough to know, that all that, is harder than you make it sound! I am always impressed (an envious) when I see talented folks like you pull together a project like that, that comes out so well!

Just Gorgeous!

The few stocks that I worked on I sent out to be checkered, I don't think it diminishes anything you created if you were to do that, I do think that checkering puts a sweet touch on the rifle. I've actually had a synthetic stock checkered once--a Kimber that wasn't from the factory--it came out well--and then I traded it--

Thanks for sharing your work and story

Regards--Don