- Location
- Beaverlodge, Alberta
So earlier this spring I bought a turn-key Radarcarve Duplicator and a bunch of tools, jigs, parts etc from CGNer and Ross forum member Stoggie in hopes of reproducing military rifle stocks. I've spent the last few months gearing up, practicing, trying to find blanks and playing around with different ideas of how I wanted things to be. Its been a long road into this new hobby and a bit of a costly venture but this weekend it has finally paid off as I now have in my possession a completely newly stocked MkII 3* rifle all ready for the range.
Things were slow to get going, this duplicator is a real challenge to operate, and is almost a hobby on its own. There are a lot of things I'm going to need to change on it more or less to create safeguards to prevent operator error and to attempt to make it more accurate for inletting (the most time consuming part of the whole operation is getting the action and all systems fitted and operating properly and bedded). I bit off a big chunk in deciding to do a MkII rifle first. The stocks are so thin that there is considerable play in the duplicator and this makes inletting a huge burden. The fitting of the action and components on this rifle took nearly 70 hours to complete. In the end though I think it was a great success, with no major flaws and only a few small flaws to do with the inletting at the back of the action and in the area around the trigger guard/mag floor. All the bands fit perfectly and the rear handguard spring actually went together quite well and I was able to use the steel rivets to good effect. I've had major issues with the rivets on past attempts as they are extremely difficult to get the heads lined up well and the spring centered in the handguard as well as getting the rivets in tight enough to do their job.
I also recently completed a MkIII de sporterization using a fore end extension I made. I would like to share those photos as well.
I made a master stock for this MKII from a MkII 3* stock which had been sanded to death and which has over 1" of the butt cut off flat. I was able to use this stock by making my master about 1/4" oversize and hand shaping the entire rear section of the butt. I learned that the master should actually be as close to the finished product as possible through doing the finished stock. I'm going to hand fit the MkII action into the master stock in order to do this. The master was too far from finished and left way too much hand fitting behind. The same is true for the master handguard set I made. I left them too far oversized and they alone took most of a day to properly fit.
Here is the spliced stock I did:
And here is the newly stocked MkII:
And the happy builder!
If you guys have any constructive criticism, hints, tips, tricks or questions on this please ask away. I'm still greener than grass when it comes to building stocks but hings are well on their way now. I'm also thinking hard about doing the Radocy rust blue I used on some of my other projects on this one seeing as its a non collector shooter grade rifle anyway, new stock may as well have new looking metal? Next I'm going to build a MkIII stock using Stoggie's master so I can see how much easier they will be to do. I know their handguards are a b*tch because they have four rivets over the MkII guards having 2 rivets. I've done two of those handguards now and neither turned out great. Its going to get better with practice though. This stock is much better than any of my previous attempts.
This stock also was the most plain cut out of my blank I have here. There is enough left to do two MkIII and one more MkII as well as a number of handguards and fore end extensions. The plan is to just keep doing this as a hobby and at my own pace, when I feel like it. So expect more to come, but I won't be taking on custom orders anytime soon as I feel it just takes the fun out of it to be obligated to do it. The ones which I want to sell will be put up in the EE however, so keep your eyes open guys if you are interested.
Steve, JP and the others, we need those nose caps now!
Thanks guys!
Brandon.
Things were slow to get going, this duplicator is a real challenge to operate, and is almost a hobby on its own. There are a lot of things I'm going to need to change on it more or less to create safeguards to prevent operator error and to attempt to make it more accurate for inletting (the most time consuming part of the whole operation is getting the action and all systems fitted and operating properly and bedded). I bit off a big chunk in deciding to do a MkII rifle first. The stocks are so thin that there is considerable play in the duplicator and this makes inletting a huge burden. The fitting of the action and components on this rifle took nearly 70 hours to complete. In the end though I think it was a great success, with no major flaws and only a few small flaws to do with the inletting at the back of the action and in the area around the trigger guard/mag floor. All the bands fit perfectly and the rear handguard spring actually went together quite well and I was able to use the steel rivets to good effect. I've had major issues with the rivets on past attempts as they are extremely difficult to get the heads lined up well and the spring centered in the handguard as well as getting the rivets in tight enough to do their job.
I also recently completed a MkIII de sporterization using a fore end extension I made. I would like to share those photos as well.
I made a master stock for this MKII from a MkII 3* stock which had been sanded to death and which has over 1" of the butt cut off flat. I was able to use this stock by making my master about 1/4" oversize and hand shaping the entire rear section of the butt. I learned that the master should actually be as close to the finished product as possible through doing the finished stock. I'm going to hand fit the MkII action into the master stock in order to do this. The master was too far from finished and left way too much hand fitting behind. The same is true for the master handguard set I made. I left them too far oversized and they alone took most of a day to properly fit.
Here is the spliced stock I did:
And here is the newly stocked MkII:
And the happy builder!
If you guys have any constructive criticism, hints, tips, tricks or questions on this please ask away. I'm still greener than grass when it comes to building stocks but hings are well on their way now. I'm also thinking hard about doing the Radocy rust blue I used on some of my other projects on this one seeing as its a non collector shooter grade rifle anyway, new stock may as well have new looking metal? Next I'm going to build a MkIII stock using Stoggie's master so I can see how much easier they will be to do. I know their handguards are a b*tch because they have four rivets over the MkII guards having 2 rivets. I've done two of those handguards now and neither turned out great. Its going to get better with practice though. This stock is much better than any of my previous attempts.
This stock also was the most plain cut out of my blank I have here. There is enough left to do two MkIII and one more MkII as well as a number of handguards and fore end extensions. The plan is to just keep doing this as a hobby and at my own pace, when I feel like it. So expect more to come, but I won't be taking on custom orders anytime soon as I feel it just takes the fun out of it to be obligated to do it. The ones which I want to sell will be put up in the EE however, so keep your eyes open guys if you are interested.
Steve, JP and the others, we need those nose caps now!
Thanks guys!
Brandon.
