I'm shaping my own stock for a Winchester 375. I like English profile stocks with slim wrists, but wondering "how small is too small?"

I want to keep enough wood to avoid splitting/breaking the wrist.

The stock has very good grain through the wrist...slightly curved in the direction and plane of the wrist curve. It is Claro Walnut. Smallest circumfrance currently 5".

The first problem is you are using claro on a 375 you should be using english,turkish,bastogne. something with strength. Claro walnut is spongy and will continue to compress over the years and in dry weather it will crack for sure. Unless you use full length glass bedding, piller bedding, cross bolts, barrel recoil lug, and a stainless steel rod throug the wrist area (i use all this on strong wood) there is no guarantee with claro. some of this is better or worse depending on action. If you do all this you can maybe get away with a very thin wrist but again no gaurantee. I have a friend that uses claro on everything and he has a 450 ackly on a weatherby claro stock and had many issues until he did everything listed above including two bbl lugs and brass pins all over the inside of the stock, no it seems to be holding. When you do do all of this dont go out and shoot the rifle in a lead sled to sight in take some precautions and it should last a long time.

Look at all the old german weatherby's in magnum calibers I dont think i have ever seen one that wasnt cracked. weatherby uses claro, and they do to internal crossbolts and the stainless rod through the wrist and the big ones 460 wby do have barrel lugs.

i dont want to ruin your project, but precautions are nescesary with claro especially if its a nice piece of wood and you spent lots of $$ on. On the other hand maybe nothing ever happens and it works fine. but i would do everything mentioned above.

Mike, your concerns are heard and noted, I've been using the same techniques since about 1970.

Texan, to answer your question, I personally wouldn't make the wrist any smaller than ~5" circumference, and that would be only after I had glassbedded a hidden steel or aluminum rod from the rear upper tang area down through the wrist into the belly area. IMO a 5" wrist gives somewhat of a feeling of lightness & fast handling without sacrificing too much strength. 5.5" is OK for large hands with long fingers, but anything larger is IMO too large for that feeling of lightness.
Regards, Joe

No doubt about it, Lead Sleds are tough on stocks...you could do only worse by holding the butt against a tree and pulling the trigger.

Shoulder guns are just not meant to take that punishment.

A medium weight 375 in a piece of good, dense English can be made into a slim, trim rifle...a grip of 4 3/4 would not be out of place. The grain must run properly in any case.

Careful bedding will produce the same split resistance as "uncareful" bedding with glass..think about it..you have perfect wood to metal contact...or you have sloppy wood to metal, so you use a filler to compensate.

Almost all grip cracks failures take place right at the guard screw...a rod will do very little good unless you somehow bridge the guard screw.

Here's where extended tangs, top and bottom really pay off with a heavy hitter. But...I don't really think extended tangs are particularily required on a 375.

Cross bolts are a good idea...the kind that actually extended outside so the heads exert pressure.. Of course, an integral barrel
recoil lug is assurance of no surprises

Really depends on the density of your wood. Starting with Claro is not the best choice if you want a slim grip stock.
I have seen old-growth Claro that was not from orchards that were watered that were dense. it was also sold as Bastogne most of the time. Bastogne is rare, the nut is sterile.

To answer your question in a suggestion based on experience.
1. Make sure it is dense.
2. Make sure it is layed out well. not cross-grained.
3. Make sure it is bedded very well.

Maybe 4 1/2" circumference...which is slim! I would not go that slim without having good wood.

Update: Duane was wrting while I was and beat me to it.
Do what he says.

quote:

Originally posted by Duane Wiebe:
Of course, an integral barrel
recoil lug is assurance of no surprises

First, thank you all for your replies, they are very much appreciated.

The rifle does have the integral barrel lug, and I did full-length bed the action and barrel channel. I was careful to ensure the action screws do not contact the bedding or wood.

One question I have is: how does the barrel lug reduce the risk of the wrist splittling/cracking? Is is by ensuring there is no backward movement of the action against the rear tang area?

You.re just increasing the recoil asbsorbtion area by about 50%...You know..spreads out the load..

A funny thing about wood strength.
Over the years we have mfg'd somewhere about 40.000 - 60.000 riflestocks.
80% was made from Black American (juglans nigra)
15% was made from European (kaucasian,frensh, german) (juglans Regia)
5% was made from Claro

The returnrate (broken or split stocks) total less than 200
But the funny or disapointing thing was that 80% was european, 5% was claro and only 15% was black american.

Most of the Black American was split along the grains, hardly ever across grains. But we also recomend recoil reinforsment, specialy in cases with heavy calibers and dubbelstack magasines
Most the european was broken across the grains

The rod through the pistol grip is tied into the rear pillar. Once the action is tightened down onto the pillar friction does provide some hold on the pillar then tying it into the rod. NOT the gaurantee but its better then not and MANDATORY ON CLARO. The other reason for the rod is to strengthen the wrist from maybe a drop on a hunt or weight being placed on the rifle in a gun case unknowingly, or a repeated use in a lead sled it might just help enough. The rod importance compared to bbl lugs and crossbolts is small.

Also leave .010 gap behind the reciever tang on the recoil surface, its small enough you wont see it and if all your crossbolts, bbl lugs, inletting, glass bedding (use marined tex or devcon on the recoil lugs, then glass for full length) is perfect it should never come back causing a log splitter effect.

In my experience almost all wrist cracks stem from a side bending pressure and not recoil as such, unless there was musket grain in the wrist of course. Usually under excessive recoil the wood behind the upper tang chips out first, long before any wrist cracks would appear.

There was an interesting article in one of the old Gunfacts magazines, about a 358 Norma Magnum Mauser installed in a punky stock that had been condemned as being totally unsuitable for any recoil at all. Seems the author installed a series of hidden glassbedded steel rods inside the inletting recesses, no bbl recoil lug at all, and then tested the rig with full loads. The rifle weighed ~7 lbs as I recall and the testing consisted of putting the butt against a large tree and then pulling the trigger. Repeatedly.

The recoil of a full-pressure 358 Norma Mag in a 7-lb rifle is fairly substantial, more than most factory 375s since the 375s are usually in heavier rifles.

I've built several 458WM Mausers and one 458 Enfield, used visible crossbolts on the first one but not the others. All are still shooting OK albeit the most-used one probably hasn't had more than 300-400 full-power rounds through it since built. Of course 300-400 rounds isn't much but it is an indicator since the 458 kicks more than the 375.
Regards, Joe

GO to big bores and look at RIP post about cz 404 give me a stock break. Thats from not having the right type of wood the wood layed out wrong Not 1/4 sawed and no steel rod through the grip area. not from wieght on the stock just recoil. cz stocks are garbage

quote:

Look at all the old german weatherby's in magnum calibers I dont think i have ever seen one that wasnt cracked.

Two old German Weatherbys. A 257 WM (top) and 300 WM circa 1955.