Howa (and possibly others) synthetic stocks "Walking"

Has anyone noticed if their Howa plastic stock (mine is on a Mini) "moves" when it gets warm ??

I was sighting in a new Mini this morning in the nice warm Southland sun, and was a bit perturbed to see the barrel touching the side of the stock - normally its nicely centred with a good free float. I'd only fired 6-8 rounds or so, and the barrel didn't feel hot (as my first thought was "oh hell I've got a lemon with a barrel that walks as it warms up"). Now I'm home I tried warming it gently with a heat gun and sure enough the stock moves quite a bit, enough to move the barrel from side to side of the channel, although it didn't duplicate how it looked this morning when it was hot.

The rifle shot quite well in terms of groups although I didn't fire enough rounds to see if the zero was wandering.

Is this a common thing with synthetic stocks? Are some makes/types more prone than others??

Yes cheap factory plastic stocks can move when warmed up, I glass bedded an old X7 arrow into the barrel channel of a few plastic stocks works well and is cheap
all Archers have broken or damaged alloy arrows the X7's are hi tensile target Arrows,
I am sure there are some bow hunters that could help you out.

Did the same on my Mossberg
Stiffened things up nicely

( Is stiffened even a word ? :) )

Some good reading on what you can try: https://www.ballisticstudies.com/sho...lizer+Kit.html

Haven’t used it myself, but I read some of Nathan’s books and that was really helpful.


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I always knew they were flexible but its the moving by itself due to a little bit of warmth thats got me . . . .

This is a curse in a hunting rifle. I had an extreme case. A 17HMR, one of the first, in a Savage plastic stock, heavy barrel. I would sight it in and it shot tiny little one hole groups then I would take it out hunting and I could not hit anything. Even easy shots. Eventually I tried shooting with different bearing points on the forend and the point of impact was moving >5" at 100m. Enough to miss rabbits.

I shot it solely off a bipod for a while and it shot extremely well. Eventually I fiber-glassed over the stock.

I don't buy synthetic stocks any more because of this.

@stug could you put a couple of layers of carbon on a plastic stock to stiffen it up.Is it worth the time and effort or not. I’ve one here that I’ve got to be careful with. Thought it may be an easy solution ( for me anyway )

Basically what I’m asking is would it adhere to the plastic, or would it just peel off with use/abuse

I'm just going to get a Boyds stock once I'm sure the rifle will really shoot (and I can afford it!!)

I had one that i generously freefloated with a rasp, bedded the action and epoxied a fibreglass fence standard into a groove cut in the stock. She is solid now.

@oraki you would need to drill and scape a few holes in the plastic to get the epoy to mechanically lock in the plastic, the epoxy won't bond to the plastic too well. Many years ago I epoxied a small piece of aluminium angle into the foreend of my Remington plastic stock to stiffen it up, worked really well.

I just open out the barrel channel a bit and use Newtech bog (fiberglass reinforced filler) to fill the squares in the forend
then sand to make it look factory,

is the stock the rubberised HOUGE or a standard synthetic?
Im looking at getting one of the howa minis soon