I am looking into making my own stock even though I have pretty much no prior woodworking experience. Could someone tell me just how difficult it would be to make one starting from a hunk of wood? Thanks.

It's a lot of work and very time consuming. For a person with little or no prior woodworking skills it could be vey frustrating. I would suggest that you start out with a semi inletted/shaped stock and see how you like working with wood. I have done 15 or so of them over the years, and believe me, you will find plenty of woodworking (and finishing)to get you started in stock work.

Seamas--

As a stockmaking instructor I'll have to disagree with craigster, I think a semi-inlet is a very bad way to learn stockmaking.

The very best thing you can do is buy two books, first.
"Restocking a Rifle" by Alvin Linden and "Professional Stockmaking" by David Westbrook.

Both are great how to books with the Linden book having an advantage in that no power tools were used by him.

The theory of inletting and shaping is extremely important. Both books cover them well. I've used the Linden method for 40 years. It works.

$200 in tools and a good vice in addition to a lot of patience and some skill with sharpening and using hand tools will get you the best stock that can be made by the hands of man.

Good wood is 50 times easier to work with than the cheap stuff. Spend a hundred bucks on a piece of plain but sound California English and have the benefit of decent wood to work with. It makes a tremendous difference.

Second the recommendation on the Wesbrook tome -- I recently did my first semi-inlet and couldn't have done it without his excellent photos and instructions.

I do have some basic woodworking skills from 2.5 yrs of work as a carpenter's helper but there's not that much crossover to this much finer work. I'd have been better prepared if I paid more attention when young to my dad, an award-winning ship model builder!

I have to concur with Mr. Belk on his recommendations regarding blanks vs semi-inletted and particularly his text references. I've used the Alvin Linden texts for about 40 years. He had a way of getting right to the meat of doing it right. One word he used frequently in describing the lines of a stock was "harmonious". His stock lines flowed and although his dimensions may not suit the scopes etc we use today the principles are the same and it is no trick to straighten the comb line to suit yourself.

The comment on using good wood should be taken to heart. Good, hard wood cuts and scrapes cleanly with no tearing or crumbling under the pressure of chisels, gouges, scrapers etc.

I do quite a few semi-inletted for different shooters (they bring them to me) and most of them bring problems to the job, usually by over agressive wood removal by the machine inletter or bad grain pulls which I believe to be caused by poor sharpening of the cutter. Guard screw holes off square or out of dimension are another problem. Magazine box inletting out of square to the action inletting are another. Finally the custom fit they want can't always be achieved as the lines of the semi-inletted stock are too firmly established with no wiggle room for adjustment.

I much prefer starting with a quality blank and following Alvins' layout procedures and then removing wood until it all fits right.

Another option is to ask the semi-inletter to leave portions of the stock oversize so you can make things fit the action and the shooter. A couple of the smaller makers can provide this service without much trouble. I've never asked a big producer if they will do this and it may not suit their operations to do that. best of luck.

Think about this.. If you have done it before then you won't have any bad habits to brake!

I have also made stocks. First You have to get good quality tools and workbench. After that You need lots of patience, open and eager mind to learn new things. But You must be very careful because in that plank of wood there is several many stocks inside. You must pick out the one that is right.

I started with a tree, on my first attempt. I learned very quickly not to rush the work. Stop if you are tired. If you goe too fast you will screw it up.

Actually you can make most of your own scrapers, gouges and chisels...I buy all the old good steel screw drivers from pawn shops and bend them to contours..I probably have 150 scrapers, when I reach a point that I need a certain shape scraper I grab a screw driver, bend the tip and grind it to needed shape then sharpen it and harden it and polish the edge.