Minelli stock review and fitting

[ssgross]

I worked on closing the gap today, and finished the bedding.

To recap...
1) make sure the barrel free floats between the muzzle bedding area and the receiver.
2) made sure the vertical portion of the recoil lug made contact with the corresponding part of the wood.
3) Check the contact in the 3 bedding areas, and nowhere else. Scape away just enough until you have even contact. be very careful with the barrel bed. it is very sensitive to even the most minor changes in the end. So for now, just a few swipes with sandpaper on a correctly sized dowel so the contact starts to wrap around the barrel a bit...as long as the wood is not touching tangent to the curve of the barrel, we are good.
4) The sides of the tang are tight, and there is no contact underneath (so far all Minelli's have been like this). So, lightly shave the flat and the sides of the tang until we get contact..we won't touch the barrel bed till the end. Keep checking and relieving any undesired contact
5)Check the inletting on the bottom metal. I had to very lightly relieve a front corner so it didn't press into the floor plate. I have never had to do anything else on the underside of a Minelli stock. The depth has always been perfect, holes aligned perfectly, and all fits snug, but not tight.

The gap between the magazine and receiver is too big, even though everything else is perfect at this point. The wood is flush with the metal, good contact at the muzzle...but the rear of the follower snags, preventing you from using stripper clips. Some people file or grind the bottom of the follower at an angle so that pressing down causes it to slip off. This fixes the rear...but the sides are a bigger problem. Insert 3 rounds. chamber one, then eject and try to chamber the second. The first round pushes the follower to the side, and 2 rounds in the magazine put it at just the right depth to wedge in that gap. No, the right way to fix it is to lower the bedding surfaces until the right gap is achieved.

The flat area acts as a fulcrum. Lightly and evenly scrape the sides and under the tang, and the flat area. If at any time you lose contact altogether under the receiver flat after tightening, then a few swipes of 150 grit under the barrel bed will bring it back. Most of the work will be around the tang. The trick is to only shave it each iteration. Removing too much material and you will "lose" the perfect curvature of the stock. Going slow, and just lightly shaving each iteration preserves the perfect even contact obtained so far. Took me half the day today to get it right.
Attachment 116687Attachment 116688
90% of the work was around the tang, so it is a good time to ensure the rear of the tang isn't touching the wood. Without a couple fingernail-wide gap, the wood can eventually split or crack with the force of the recoil.
THIS IS THE ONLY TIME A POWER TOOL MAY BE ADVISABLE. The sanding drum on my dremmel is the perfect diameter, and my harbor freight chisels are certainly not up to the task of creating a clean, sharp, curve.
Attachment 116689
How many times do I have to tell the kids "you must wear shoes if you come in the shop!"
Here is the final, perfect magazine gap...
Attachment 116690
I should mention that I didn't scrap until this gap was achieved. As I mentioned, I scraped away until about halfway from what you see in the initial picture...which wasn't enough...BUT, with repeated tightening of the screws as you fit, the magazine will dig into the wood and close the gap a bit more than where you stop. Here is where it was when I stopped messing with the tang.
Attachment 116691
Here is the tang before and after fitting the correct gap.
Attachment 116692Attachment 116693

The tang is now done. Don't touch it anymore. Next, I checked the pressure at the barrel bed - about 4-5 lbs. This is because we had to lower the tang so much. So now we scrape away the flat...evenly, until we get 8+ lbs at the muzzle. I also finalize how the wood at the barrel bed wraps around the barrel. I want about 1/4" wide uniform contact for the last 1/2-1". BE CAREFUL...just 1 swipe of the sandpaper can take away a pound or more. You can't put wood back on. Also, don't forget to keep checking for contact in any undesired areas. Any other contact can screw up your efforts efforts here.

So that's it. The bedding is now perfection, and we have plenty of material to tune the upward pressure at the barrel bed when we range test.

Next post, I need to fit the handgaurd ring. Then we will work on aligning the handgaurd and slimming down the oversized outer profile

Information

Warning: This is a relatively older thread This discussion is older than 360 days. Some information contained in it may no longer be current.