New Benchrest Stock Design

B

BullseyeDave

New member
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
Hello I am going to design a benchrest style stock. I will show you some tips and tricks, and show you how easy it is to make a custom gun stock with very limited tools. If you have a skil saw, belt sander, a drill and elbow grease, you can do this no problem, you will see how easy it is.
O.K. here I go,
Step 1. go buy some good quality plywood, this is 3/4 maple.
004_zpsf8e8dba2.jpg
[/URL][/IMG]
Step 2. Eye balling(technical term, very important step)
4-11-2012781_zpsa52558c1.jpg
[/URL][/IMG]
More to come stay tuned
 
Good timing. I am about to start laminating some plywood to make a blank for a knock off McMillan A5 to fit my Savage Mk.II. I look forward to seeing your tips and tricks before I hack my attempt up too much.


Mark
 
Before you get too far you might want to consider getting some solid maple instead of using plywood. First off, the plywood you buy at the local stores isn't maple all the way through. Only the face laminations are maple. The rest is just fir or some other softwood. And you'll see that once you start cutting and shaping as the wood won't want to sand well. Basically if the plywood you have uses laminations that are 1/16 or thicker then it's not maple or birch or any other hardwood.

If you are serious about using plywood then go with the specialty Baltic birch plywood. You'll know you have the right stuff because the laminations are very thin and it's all birch right through. Heavy as hell and priced to match. But for a plywood rifle stock it would be the way to go
 
Hello, Ok back from the home depot, got plywood ready to go. Ok first to address some concerns, yes production ply is not maple each layer, it is maple and poplar on the alternate layers which is still a hardwood just on the softest end of the scale. It is plenty strong enough for rimfire and I normally paint my stocks anyways, so it is all good for me. This stock I am going to make will be the master copy, and any of what I going to do can be done with solid wood, I am going to kind of make a few of these all at once and will be adding solid wood to some, you will see as the project continues. I should have step one have a plan, I have a plan. Innercity thanks, i am glad you like them those are some of the best ones. No beer in this garage, I need the fingers to make the stocks. MM not sure what your plan is or if you have made a stock or two before. so I will start with some of the way I would make one of the off-hand style stocks. I don't really have the best pictures for that build, but I can go into a little. I forgot to upload my pictures back in 5 min.
 
I'm following this with much interest... Any progress made?

I've been thinking about making my own stock someday, but I was going to scour the internet for a piece of walnut with a burl in the butt. I also need to figure out how to make a duplicator jig. Either that or just hog out the internals and use epoxy to make the inletting fit right.
 
BullseyeDave said:
MM not sure what your plan is or if you have made a stock or two before. so I will start with some of the way I would make one of the off-hand style stocks. I don't really have the best pictures for that build, but I can go into a little. I forgot to upload my pictures back in 5 min.
Click to expand...

I have never made a stock from scratch, but I have inletted and fitted one semi-finished blank so far, along with tweaking and bedding a few others. I have done my share of other wood working as well, so I am not too worried, but more info and experience is always a good thing.


mikeystew said:
I've been thinking about making my own stock someday, but I was going to scour the internet for a piece of walnut with a burl in the butt. I also need to figure out how to make a duplicator jig. Either that or just hog out the internals and use epoxy to make the inletting fit right.
Click to expand...

I would suggest making a couple of practice ones before starting in on a nice piece of expensive wood. Inletting isn't that hard with basic tools, it takes more patience than anything. Remove a bit of wood, check the fit, remove a bit more, check the fit, etc. Regardless of how nicely you inlet the action you will want to glass bed it anyway.


Mark
 
Mark, I have several pieces of nice quilted maple for just that purpose, free from my backyard. I'm just letting it season for another few months. And hey if one turns out good, that's a bonus!
 
First off who ever is in their underwear must leave or put your pants back on,this is a family show.
O.K . so I am completely computer illiterate, I had the whole first little section all wrote up and the went to pre-view it and I got timed out for some reason and it was all lost, man that sucked. I did not have a plan on the build thread, and it bit me in the butt. So round two with a plan. I will start with MM again, as I said before not sure what your build plan is, this is what I do for duplicating. I cut the boards down to 8”x48” because I can get two stocks out of 8” and then I would glue up three of them and then cut them to fit on the machine.

0172_zpsfd6523f5.jpg
[/URL][/IMG]
That is not how I am making this stock; this stock will be master stock for making copies. I made my off-hand style stock with a more of a bench style fore-grip, but the butt stock was all wrong for bench rest shooting. Let me say this also, I do not shoot bench rest and have not done much research about it. The idea behind this stock is just to kind of mess around with some of the things I learned on rimfirecentral.com. Therefore, I wanted to make a true bench rest stock and you know that got me thinking about the best way to design one. I down loaded so cad stuff and went about it that way at first, but I could not figure out how to get the more complex curves out of the design features. I bagged that idea. I have made a few fiberglass stocks and the first one I made I cut the inletting out of a factory stock and bedded it into the fiberglass stock.
inlettinginsert2_zpscedcbb76.jpg
[/URL][/IMG]
0032_zps040c742f.jpg
[/URL][/IMG]
It work great, it worked so good I made some templates from the rimfire web site to do my inletting, and started to make the inserts myself.
008_zpse7e04757.jpg
[/URL][/IMG]
002_zpsa21c4873.jpg
[/URL][/IMG]
0042_zps9e087cc4.jpg
[/URL][/IMG]
 
I should have stated earlier I have not made a stock this way yet, so this could be good or epic fail. HAHAHAHA. As I was making these I started to notice some important facts about the and started to eye-ball and think about the way the 10/22 is made and how it fits into the stock. Took a couple measurements, and that really got me thinking. Sp I ripped a couple of the 8" boards down and doweled them together and inletted them.
0072_zps12023e7d.jpg
[/URL][/IMG]
0062_zpsd9384d50.jpg
[/URL][/IMG]
0052_zpsa441a4a3.jpg
[/URL][/IMG]
005_zps3e55343e.jpg
[/URL][/IMG]
0292_zps794761d5.jpg
[/URL][/IMG]

017_zps64831f7c.jpg
[/URL][/IMG]
015_zpsc8217633.jpg
[/URL][/IMG]
The router bits I used are 1/2" x 1 1/2" and 1/2" x 2" with a 5/8" template bushing. more tomorrow
 
BullseyeDave said:
I cut the boards down to 8”x48” because I can get two stocks out of 8” and then I would glue up three of them and then cut them to fit on the machine.
Click to expand...

What glue are you laminating the plywood with? I was going to use boring old aliphatic resin, but there may be better choices specifically for laminating sheet products together.

My plan is to laminate the plywood to form a blank, cut the outside shape with a jigsaw and then hand finish the outside shape. Inletting will be done with a router and hand tools.


Mark
 
Not to brag but I've got this handy inletting tool that I call "My Mill/Drill".... :D

Dave, sorry about the nagging over the plywood makeup. I just wasn't sure if you were aware of the situation and ready for dealing with the finishing issues that the softer core layers would produce. Sounds like you're on top of it from past projects though.

That's a slick technique for working with the fiberglass stocks. I'm looking forward to seeing the progress and your shaping ideas.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom