Thread: Walnut Stock Build

So some of the changes I made to the stock at this point were to reduce LOP by ¼”, flatten off the palm swell slightly, and deepen and extend the comb fluting. All easily done. But I also couldn’t shake the feeling that the pistol grip was just a bit thick (as seen in the profile view) at the upper end. Unfortunately to drop this top line downwards would have introduced the humpback look you can see on the original Anschutz stock, due to the shallow angle of the tang. I didn’t like that idea much. In fact the more I looked at the pattern stock the less I liked the top line being convex at all - it would be more graceful if it was flat or concave. The only solution seemed to be to modify the tang.
These Anschutz actions are case-hardened, so off to the poor-man’s surface grinder (cup wheel in my mill-drill). I made up a spindle to fit the wheel into an existing collet chuck, trued the wheel with a diamond dresser and setup dust extraction to pull any abrasive grit away from the mill table. Given that it was the first time I’d tried this setup I think it worked quite well:





This is the most I could steepen the tang angle while still keeping the bolt lug sufficiently engaged in the guide slot when in the rearmost position. I polished the surfaces up after grinding, but I don’t have a photo of that. I then re-contoured the stock in this area and ended up much happier with the result in both feel and appearance. Perhaps not the best photo, but you get the idea.


People are probably getting tired of seeing a piece of brown painted totara, so next post will be back to some nicely grained walnut!