Prestigious gunstocks review..any real life experiences?

icehunter121

icehunter121

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I need a couple of stocks but am wondering if anyone has purchased from them? How was the fit, as in was the inletting properly aligned with the stock? Was there ample wood left on the outside of the stock for a proper final fitting and finishing?

I am doing a P14 up right now with a repro from a fella in AB. but am not impressed one bit. The wood on the outer side of the barrel channel is going to be rather thin in places, as well as the barrel channel in one of the upper handguards was not milled straight compared to the barrel. The whole forened actually is undercut and will make a stock with a dished appearance on both sides of the barrel channel. The wood underneath the bolt stop /bolt release screw is so non existent that if I use the original screw it will end up sitting on the outside of the stock rather then being located in the stock where its supposed to be. By the time I do the final sanding the whole stock will be rather thin in the forearm. The whole thing is a F$@&*^N mess.

Not sure if I should try and continue on and use it. It will end up being a "representative specimen" of what the rifle would look like or just throw it in the firepit. But I also need another NO4 MK1 stock for one of my other rifles so before I dump the money on 2 stocks I would like some real world feedback!!
 
The one I put together was one of their premium sets which was excellent. It did need fitting but wasn’t any big issues. Any problems I hear about their stocks is their B grade ones. I expect them not to be as good as a premium set along with more work to make them fit. Sometimes it’s well worth paying extra to get a better product. Which grade did you get ?
 
All stocks that are new or even new old stock and never mounted on a Lee Enfield rifle need to be fitted to be bedded properly, etc.

Once in a while you can get lucky.
 
bearhunter said:
All stocks that are new or even new old stock and never mounted on a Lee Enfield rifle need to be fitted to be bedded properly, etc.

Once in a while you can get lucky.
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Already knew that. But before I dump $1K into a couple of stocks I want to know about anyone elses experience with them.
 
I bought a No.4 Mk1 set ($550) for a '43 LB that was missing a stock set.
It arrived and the butt stock was so mis-matched I though it was a different walnut from the black walnut that made up the fore end and hand guards.

I emailed them comparative photos with the wood 'wet' with mineral spirits, and they basically told me to pound sand.

Couldn't say what the fit up will look like as I've shelved the project for the time being.

Without doubt will not support them going forward - and they are local to me which is important.
 
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icehunter121 said:
Already knew that. But before I dump $1K into a couple of stocks I want to know about anyone elses experience with them.
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I bought my first set from Prestigious and the last three from the UK.

Bryce from the UK bends over backwards to keep the outside dimensions extremely close and asks if you want the wood to be matching.

The wood I got from Prestigious was nice but IMHO oversize, just required a bit of extra effort to fit but I would buy from them again.
 
I recently bought an SMLE with one of their stock sets installed, by an amateur. The foreend and handguards were in the right proportions and came together well, with some inelegant inletting and a couple of undisclosed chips from careless fitting. The buttstock was very beefy and will require some remedial thinning. However, the buttstock hole wasn't in the proper area, and it rode too low. There was receiver showing at the top and too much wood covering the trigger guard at the bottom. The cut for the safety was just hogged out roughly with far too much wood removed. I suspect the stock misalignment came from the maker, but since I didn't purchase it from them, I didn't call them out on it. Surgery on the butt is required and I'll probably rout out a piece at the top and glue in a patch and fit it up properly. I suspect that the bedding isn't well done, so I'll probably have to work on that before shooting it.
Prior to buying the rifle, I bought three Lee-Enfield sets from them, so I'll be a bit apprehensive when I start working on them.
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The wood that I purchased came matching but I noticed it was oversized to the point where it's worrisome how much needed to be removed. There is alot of unfinished routing marks from being cut that need to be sanded out and cleaned up.

In hindsight it would be noted that enfields suck to fit from factory "fresh" wood in general. No4s are alot easier to bed.
 
Razor117 said:
The wood that I purchased came matching but I noticed it was oversized to the point where it's worrisome how much needed to be removed. There is alot of unfinished routing marks from being cut that need to be sanded out and cleaned up.

In hindsight it would be noted that enfields suck to fit from factory "fresh" wood in general. No4s are alot easier to bed.
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Fitment of stocks to Lee Enfield rifles was a real trade back in the day. It was never just a take a new bit out of the bins or off the rack and slap it on a rifle.

Most folks have never dealt with surplus NOS stock parts to understand this.

All of them required fitting after coming from the stock maker. Some more than others.

I've seen some pretty poorly put together No1 and No4 rifles by REMEs that were in a rush to get them back in service or for a factory to fulfill contractual obligations in a timely manner.

Can't blame all of them on Bubba

Many of us were spoiled by the post war produced No1 and No4 rifles. They were fitted beautifully for the most part and properly to ensure the rifles were accurate enough to fit within the accepted specs of the time.

The No4 MkII rifles were some of the best, if not the best of them to be issued.

On the No1 rifles just about anything built after WWI and later FTRed to as new spec were also incredible rifles.

The people that assembled those rifles were experts and knew how to fit them properly and what was required.

I've had both types of stocks that were in storage since manufacture and for the most part the outside surfaces didn't require any further finishing. All of them required some work to the inletting or the butt socket dimensions. Most were IMHO very slightly oversize but there may have been a purpose behind that.
 
2015, the good ole days. Numerich selling 1,000 never used new condition SMLE Forends from various makers WWI and II era at $59 each. Sale lasted 18 months. I grabed 80 back then. Check the threads here 2015,16.
The good ole days.
 
I have used Prestige in the past a couple times, mixed product quality to be sure. Some of the wood was decent and didn’t need a ton of material to be taken off, one butt stock was visibly larger then a NOS butt, not just a little bit either, and required a few hours of extra work. Some forend wood seemed undersized and thin, again comparing to NOS pieces. Would not buy from them again, Dean Boyce from Lee Enfield Parts and Milita out of the UK is your best bet, in my opinion anyway. Most times he has NOS butt stocks, and top wood, the only reproduction wood is the fore stock itself. Plus any metal bits are already attached to the pieces, no hunting them down. Too bad as I like to try and support Canadian businesses when possible.
 
I’ve been down this road, but on the other side of the fence.

Stock work takes HUNDREDS of man hours to get anywhere with. Generally, the people doing it now are not working with industrial grade tooling. The lightly built hobby type duplicators are not a precision machine. They are under built for the work being asked of them. Not only that, but copying wood master stocks ads much more flex into the whole equation. When you get flex is when you get undercut. To combat the undercut I made my masters oversized or simply set the machine up to cut the new stock 1/4” oversized in all dimensions. What you are left with is a stock requiring huge amounts of fitting. Basically when they come off the duplicator they are only ‘roughed out’. What the duplicator does is save you time bulking the shape of the stock in. Then everything from there is had fitting. When I was doing MkIII Ross stocks for example, it would take 3-4 hours to cut one on the duplicator. Then an additional 75-100 hours to finish the stock by hand.

My duplicator was only an x/y axis, so any vertical plunging was done on a radius, this added to the extra work involved.

Another factor in this is dimensions of the rifle from the factory. Tooling wears out, and every rifle out there will be different dimensionally. You wouldn’t think it, but there is a large variance out there on most.

What it boils down to is this: the guys making the stocks are doing the best they can do within reason. If you want a custom fitted perfect stock they need to fit EVERYTHING for you. To YOUR parts. If this happens, the five or six hundred dollars you’re expecting to pay for a perfect fitting stock is going to turn into more like a few thousand dollars, and your stock maker is still only getting paid minimum wage, not getting ‘rich’ like so many people seem to think.

And yes, I will defend these guys based on my experience. You have to decide, is it worth full custom gun maker prices, or are you going to work with what they give you. Hell, I bet you could even ask and they could make the outside dimensions oversized and the inletting undersized so you can had fit it.
 
I have used a North Star industrial carving machine to produce muzzleloading gunstocks with a 36" barrel. 12 spindles, 6 motors, each turning 2 spindles with flat belt drive. Couldn't hear yourself think when it was running. I would only do 6 stocks at a time, and even then there was about 20% loss. Worse with 12 stocks. A cast aluminum pattern was used.
These pantograph machines are old technology. We eventually gave up, sent our pattern down to Fajen, bought stocks from them.
A smaller lightweight machine is going to be slow. OK for personal use, problematic for commercial use.
Modern production is done with CNC machining centers. Do a search for Jim Kibler on youtube, have a look at the stocks he is producing for muzzleloading longrifles. You won't see video of the machines at work - proprietary information. But his stocks are superb. The Lee Enfield stocks out of the UK are also CNC machined. Look up Leszek Foks in Poland. I don't know how he carving his service rifle stocks, but they look really good.
 
It seems that everyone thinks they can fit a stock for a Lee Enfield, they can't. The guys who make them can't really win, if they make them oversize so they can be fitted properly, folks complain if they make them to closer spec, folks remove too much wood and then complain. Like many facets of the gun business, it's a miracle anyone bothers at all. Long hours, difficult work and no real profit at the end of the day - and then people talk sh*t about you.
 
enefgee said:
It seems that everyone thinks they can fit a stock for a Lee Enfield, they can't. The guys who make them can't really win, if they make them oversize so they can be fitted properly, folks complain if they make them to closer spec, folks remove too much wood and then complain. Like many facets of the gun business, it's a miracle anyone bothers at all. Long hours, difficult work and no real profit at the end of the day - and then people talk sh*t about you.
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People have become used to the stocks made by Boyd's, Stocky's etc, where they require very little if any fitting, even on their military repros.

There's a very good reason why they don't mass produce or set up their machinery to produce Lee Enfield type, two piece stocks.

It's almost impossible to make them so they fit even acceptably, let alone drop in, on most rifles.

Fitting a two piece stock to a Lee Enfield isn't for someone looking to "just assemble and shoot"

It doesn't require a lot of skill, but it does require a steady hand, a good set of eyes, sharp tools, proper tools, and most of all PATIENCE.

All of the stocks mentioned here "need to be fitted"

The odd person gets away with getting a stock that allows their rifle to be "dropped in" This isn't the norm.

It wasn't normal at any time since the original rifles first went into production. It's always required relatively skilled tradespeople, with proper mind set and training to do this type of work.

It's also one of the major reasons nations went away from wooden stocks and switched almost exclusively to composite stocks and other furniture. Much easier to produce, and cheaper, and they can be manufactured to tolerance so close they are interchangeable from one firearm to another with only basing tools.

For those of us remanufacturing these old warhorses back to their original military state, it's not a matter of throwing a bunch of components together, but also getting the feel of what the original armorers and assemblers went through while preparing them to shoot acceptably before being issued.

My Aunt worked at the Long Branch facility during WWII. She had all sorts of stories about it.

One of the things she mentioned was the repetitiveness of the jobs. Fitting butts was a job in itself. Fitting fore stocks was another job in itself. The same for applying finishing etc.

There were a couple of tables where all the workers did was fit the male end of the butt spud into a specially machined base so that it was snug but not too tight or loose for the fitter to assemble quickly, without fussing around. All to speed up the finished end product.

The list of single-purpose jobs is staggering when it comes to manufacturing Lee Enfield rifles.

When we as individuals take on a project to refurbish one of these rifles, we have to duplicate all of those steps by ourselves, especially when it comes to stock fitment.
 
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