Still working on putting up pictures......the stock is coming along quite well, although a few minor gremlins arose in the fitting. There are numerous small discrepancies in the machining and inletting i.e high spots around the receiver area, holes drilled 1/16 of an inch off centre, or too shallow, excess timber not trimmed off and so on. While this may sound like a quality control issue, it also means that I can do some precise repairs and alterations to suit my project, without fear of ruining a collectable's value.

Working with brand new timber also means no oil soaked or crushed bits of wood. What ever shimming I may need will be brass or aluminium instead of the more traditional cardboard or cork which tends to compress over time. It took a couple of hours of patient sanding and inletting to get the fore end to sit properly, but I'm really pleased with the progress. The trigger guard in particular has to be just right to wedge up the fore end so the drawers sit at the correct angle with the recoil lugs and have equal bearing on both sides. Like wise floating the barrel from just in front of the knox form to just past the barrel band and then bedding it correctly up to the nose cap to give the correct upward pressure between 4 and 7 pounds.

Still undecided on whether to use tung oil on the internal timber, and linseed oilicon on the exterior, but once the rain stops and the weather warms up I should have made my mind up. Just to recap- I'll make this one as close as I can to "as issued" set up the way the original armourers had them, and see what kind of accuracy I get to start with. With brand new stock and as new metal work, the basics are already there, although it may take some seasoning to settle things down. I don't want this thread to draw out, so if it shoots 2MOA as is I'll leave it, and if it doesn't, I'll keep going. Hopefully some photo's soon.