Inletting for a 579 action

[baboonstalker]

I will be starting on a custom laminated stock for a 243 AI based on a L579 action soon and was wondering of anyone here has done it before?
Is there standard inletting drawings available somewhere on the net? and how did you tackle the job?
Pieter

 

[wburkert]

Dear Pieter:

Do not attempt to make a stock without reading about it first. You will not have much luck.

If you can find one, get the book by Alvin Linden on stockmaking. "Old Scratch" was a stockmaker back before WWII and a little after WWII. He goes into detail on how to inlet, shape, and finish gunstocks. Search "Add-all" for books on the internet.

Another, more current book is Professional Stockmaking - Through the Eyes of a Stockmaker - which was for sale through Brownells at one time. At least, I think, that is where I got mine.

Let me know if you cannot find them, I will get the complete titles and authors off my books which are at home.

I would get both books as I learned from each.

I've made about 6 rifles and shotgun stocks from blanks (not semi-inletted). Unless you enjoy very time consuming, detailed work and have great patience, I would not attempt.

To make a long story short, there are no standard drawings for inletting. Briefly, one starts with a center line which is established on both the top and bottom of the blank. Using calipers, the shape of your action and barrel is transferred onto this center-line. The action is "sunk" into the wood using chisels, gouges and scrapers. A spotting compound is used to see where wood and metal meet. I cheat a little using a plunge router to very carefully hog out large quantities of wood and establish action depths, but other than that it is a quiet, hand tool operation.

Make certain that your tools are sharp, put on your favorite music and enjoy the process.

Do not be in a hurry to shape the stock. Do all your inletting first. Shaping the pistol grip, etc., is not an art. It is a couple simple measurements which will establish reference points and then it is simply drawing a curve between two points. A bandsaw is nice to have for gross removal of wood but mostly you'll need good rasps, etc. for this process. You'll work up a sweat at times.

And whatever you do, do not create your own "look" when shaping the stock. Even though you are going laminated, keep the style in the "classic" vein and you will not go wrong. Look at stocks on Kimbers, Dakotas, even Rugers for nice, classic profiles. Avoid the "Weatherby" California look. It redefined ugly.

If you want to checker your stock, get the book by Monte Kennedy - Checkering and Carving of Gunstocks.


Good luck.

Bill

 

[wburkert]

Dear Pieter,

Just looked to see if those books showed up on "add-all" and they did. Wow, the prices are really high, unbelievable. The Professional Stockmaking by David Wesbrook is about $200 and the book Stockmaking by Alvin Linden is $170.00. The publisher of the Linden book is Stackpole and the book contains all three of the pamphlets which comprise the work. You'll either need the book or the three separate pamphlets. I have the book.

I'm going home right now and insure my copies!

Bill

 

[baboonstalker]

Hi Bill,
I do think i have what it takes to make a stock from scratch - PATIENCE, and a fairly understanding wife!
I also have my own mechanical workshop and even though i am mostly into metalworking and instruments, wood(ish) material is not a foreign substance in my book.
I will be pillar bedding this stock and was thinking of doing most of the inletting on the milling machine and just finish the inletting with hand tools.
shaping would be bandsaw, rasp, sandpaper and elbow grease.
I would do my best to get hold of some litrature as fitting the rifle to me is very foreign.
Let me go fishing for litrature!
Thank you for the information.
Pieter
PS. would you mind posting some pics of your work?

 

[wburkert]

Dear Pieter,

I wish that I had a milling machine! Your background should be more than adequate to perform this task.

Do make certain that you get a book. You task will be made much easier.

Even though you are pillar bedding, make certain that you still do a real neat job on the inletting as the depths are important. There is a guy who posted a pillar bedding "how to" on the internet, I think it was Richard's Rifles. He talks about the importance of good inletting prior to pillar bedding.

I would love to post some pictures of my rifles and will do so tomorrow. I have one L461 Sako, the rest are Remingtons, Rugers, and Mausers plus a Pennsylvania Long Rifle and a Zoli SxS shotgun thrown in for good measure.

I'll post the L461 here and if you want to see the others you can email me. I don't think the administrator would like me clogging up the file space with non-Sakos.
[email protected]

Good luck.

Bill

P.S. BaboonStalker - That is quite the handle.

 

[baboonstalker]

I look forward to your pictures.
"P.S. BaboonStalker - That is quite the handle."
Baboons are considered vermin here and i have a bit of a personal war going with them. Baboons are extremely alert and cunning and you don't catch them with the same trick twice so it becomes a bit like a game of chess!
(now that makes me sound stupid, but they are good at their own game)

 

[wburkert]

Dear Pieter,

You are obviously from S. Africa. There aren't many baboons here in the States, just idiots, mostly residing in Washington,DC. No open season on them except at election time, which for us, cannot come anytime too soon. They, too, are a clever bunch.

I had a 243AI in a Remington Short Action 700. I bought it used and it came with a bunch of loaded ammo and a three piece Redding die set. I took the rifle to the range and shot it but it did not shoot all that well. The other owner was a hotrodder and the barrel was shot out. The loads that came with the rifle were pretty hot and some of the cartons were labeled "loose primers" . It is now a 22BR as I wanted it for shooting groundhogs. It is quieter than the 243AI but I would love to have a 243AI even though I really have no use for it. It is a cool looking round with the 40 degree shoulder and has blistering velocities. Probably turn those baboons inside out.

Do you have P.O.Ackely's two volume set of books? If not, they are really good reading.

I'm at my business right now, between customers, and will send picture of my L461 .222 later today.

Bill

 

[stonecreek]

Baboonstalker:

I hunted with a farm family in Namibia a couple of years ago and found out what pests, menaces really, that baboons are.

When we were planning our hunt I didn't have any wish to shoot a baboon, thinking it would be a bit like shooting humans. Once in Namibia, I quickly understood their true nature -- they are parasitic predators that kill household pets, ruin fruit trees and crops, and even carry and spread human diseases. And once hunted, they become very evasive.

Our hosts had them listed on the trophy fee list at 50 Euros each, but once we became friends they explained that they only put a price on them to make the "city boys" from Munich and Milan think they were worth shooting. They begged us to shoot all that we could for no charge at all. The previous summer the farm owner had killed 34 of the beggars out of a tree by his patio. But from the population we saw within a kilometer of the house, he hadn't damaged them much.

 

[baboonstalker]

Went hunting for them in the mountains with a friend today. We managed to get two opportunities at them and both times we fired within a second of each other.
Harvest time for the grapes starts monday and these guys are going for it already.
I can do with a 6mm AI, but if all goes well it should be ready before the harvest is out!:bigsmile3:
Stonecreek, Nam is also a beautifull country and i used to visit regularly on fishing trips. What did you hunt there, when and with whom?
Also feel free to post some pics because i do not think writing about it alone would do it justice.
P

 

[stonecreek]

I hunted in June of 2007 with Heino Voigts and his son, Albert Voigts von Schutz on their farm called Nomtsas. Nomtsas is about 275 km south of Windhoek, or 40 km or so north of the town of Maltahohe. Nomtsas has a fabulous amount of game, particularly considering that their average rainfall is only about 17 or 18 cm.

I hunted with my son and a good friend, and it was the first (and so far only) trip to Africa for any of us. We all shot Sakos -- mine was a .338, my son's a .30-06, and Bill's was a .300 Win.

We took multiple kudu, oryx, springbok, mountain zebra (in the nearby Naukluft Mountains), red hartebeest, black wildebeest, warthog, jackal, and baboons. In addition, we saw giraffe, plains zebra, blesbok, eland, ostrich, blue wildebeest, and a few other species. The shots tend to be long in this dry, open country and our Sakos served us well. I took one springbok at nearly 400 yards. We didn't shoot at a single animal that we did not recover.

We were the first Americans to ever hunt with the Voigts, as all of their previous clients had been European. Heino is obvously quite a marksman himself and they were delighted that we were willing to take longer shots, and sometimes running shots when necessary. Their European clients seem to want to get down to "Black Forest" hide distances and are extremely "deliberate" about shooting. As Albert commented, the Europeans "want to drink a cup of coffee before they decide to shoot" .

I'll post just one photo to save space on the server, but here's a link to a "hunting report" I did on the Accurate Reloading forum with lots of photos you might enjoy: https://forums.accuratereloading.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/6321043/m/345103907?r=570105417#570105417

From L to R are my friend Bill, my son Jake, and myself shown with my 55" kudu.

 

[wburkert]

Dear Pieter,

If all goes well you should be able to see my L461 Sako which I restocked using curly hard maple. Hard maple is actually sugar maple, Acer sacharum (spelling?) which is indigenous in the Eastern US and southern Canada. Curly wood occurs in a small percentage of the sugar maple trees. I own a hardwood lumber business which gives me an opportunity to latch onto a piece now and again.

The figure is accented with flame called a suigi finish. It is a lot more difficult to apply than a simple stain but the grain highlights are slightly better pronounced and long lasting. Potassium permanganate mixed in water is used to touch up areas that one tries to avoid with the flame. These areas are usually around the inletting which have a tendency to burn or char.

Bill

 

[Anonymous]

Stonecreek,
Wow! What can you say about that trip? Looks like the trip of a lifetime and you guys had a ball. I hope to get there with my .375 H&H in the next couple years. Hard to get away right now with my elderly mother to take care of and no brothers or sisters. Thanks for bringing my dreams to me via your trip.
S-A

 

[Anonymous]

wburkert,
Very nice stock. That wood is super. Nice work.
S-A

 

[gunner620]

wburkert,great looking stock you made,lots of hours I suppose.stonecreek,looks like you had a great time.I see a big smile.Jim

 

[baboonstalker]

Oh how i have the ability to steer off the topic! (but you just have to "think hunting" while stockmaking)
Very nice photo's of a memorable hunt stonecreek. Red hartebeest are funny looking animals and i can never decide if they are goodlooking or downright ugly, they sure are different. They are also very fast and i think they have the biggest pump of all the species you took. Orix (Gemsbok) for me is the most beatifull buck and nothing makes me happier than watching lone Orix in the duneveld. I noticed you offered the Orix your son shot a last meal to send it on. If i am not mistaken that is a German tradition, but was also practiced by the Bushman of the Kalahari. This is a sign of respect for the quarry just hunted.
The Kudu (horns pictured) was taken by my dad on his last hunting trip in Namibia 3 months before he died in 1988.
I took the orix and Springbuck August last year in Kenhardt, Northern Cape.
Oryx was taken with my 30-06 Steyr-Manlicher, 165gr sp and the springbuck was taken with the .243Win also Steyr-Manlicher, 87gr HPBT



Sighting in our rifles from the front porch of the hut we stayed in.

Bill, nice looking wood. It looks like it is still on fire! What do you treat the wood with after the suigi treatment to seal it?
Pieter

 

[stonecreek]

Pieter,

This is your thread, so you can take it anywhere you wish! You're dad's kudu is absolutely amazing! It must rank well into the top numbers of Rowland Ward (though that's probably not something you're interested in.) Do you have any idea how many inches (cm) it scores when measured around the curve? What part of Namibia did it come from?

Your oryx looks to be a female from the length of its horns. It takes an expert to tell the sexes when they are on the hoof and running two hundred meters away! I've heard some speculate that the antelope on the floorplate of Deluxe Sakos is a stylized oryx. Beautiful as it is, I can only say that the Sako antelope is a stylized "something" as it bears no close resemblance to any African antelope I'm familiar with.

The red hartebeest did seem to be the toughest animal of any we took. I shot it in the heart-lung area with a 225 grain Nosler Partition from my .338 and it went down, but not "out". A "finisher" shot to the chest from the .338 almost rolled it over, but afterward its head popped back up and it required a third shot to the neck to make the deal permanent! This is my only experience with them, but they do seem hardy. I have the hide drapped over the back of the couch in our den and it elicits lots of complements. Oryx seem pretty tough, but the kudus, despite their size, seem to go down relatively easily. Who knows, maybe this is only the luck of the draw? Contrary to what I would have thought, mountain zebra, once wounded, seem to give it up and don't go very far or very fast. I'm told that bringing down a giraffe, with its heart as big as a washtub, is a task not for the squeemish.

 

[wburkert]

Dear Pieter,

There are many ways to finish a stock, some involving witch craft, but this is what I do.

I apply many, many coats of Waterlox tung oil. I use it on all my stocks. It is a time consuming process taking days because what one wants is a finish that fills the pores of the wood so that it is perfectly smooth. The hard maple is easier to accomplish this than on walnut which has deeper pores.

Briefly, I finish sand the stock to 220 grit. Then I raise the grain using water and a hair dryer. Sand the resulting whiskers off. Do this a couple times. If finishing walnut or a laminate stock one can now begin to add the tung oil.

First coat - very heavy, keep slopping it on until the wood is saturated, particularly the end grain areas. Wipe off the excess and let dry.

Each additional coat is applied with dobbers. Make dobbers from an old tee-shirt, something without lint, and cut into maybe 4" x 4" squares, not critical. Take some cotton balls, three or four, and stick them inside one of these folded up squares to make a dobber. Apply light coats. Throw dobber away. I burn them in my woodstove as they can combust spontaneously.

Lightly wet sand with 300 grit between coats. When I'm getting to the point where it is nearing completion I'll use 400 and then 500 grit for the sanding.

I rub-out the final coat with a mixture of rotten stone and mineral oil using a felt pad. Then I apply a furniture paste wax.

Again, this is one way to do it. There does not seem to be a "magic bullet" for this finishing process. Both the Alvin Linden and the David Wesbrook books detail a number of finishes. Alvin Linden was just getting into the use of tung oil when he wrote his book back in the 1940's.

Hunting - one thing about Africa, there are so many different species of game animals that one would need to make a study of it before one went hunting there. Here in Pennsylvania we have the whitetailed deer, the black bear, the fox and the coyote plus some other smaller, furbearing animals. Thats about it!

Good luck with your stock.

 

[baboonstalker]

SC, Yes that one majestic bull! My dad shot two of them on that trip. As i remember the one had more curls and the other's horns was longer. I think i have the one with more curl. I just measured it and the longest horm comes in at 144cm (56.7 inches)
My Orix was indeed a female and she was pointed out to me by the farm owner. I was the only one shooting on that day and we were about 7 people in the party (me and a friend, the farm owner and his brother and 3 trackers. We followed the heard and he would point her out. The heard was uneasy and there was always another animal in front or behind her. After we were onto the heard the 4th time i was getting anxious to take the shot and took it while she briefly apeared between two other animals. Unfortunately the shot was a little too far back and she did not go down imediately. Orix is also noutoriously tough. We followed her and when i found her standing on a rocky outcrop i took a standing shot at +_ 60 yards. The shot hit her on the black patch on the forehead and that was the end for her. The longest horn measured 101cm (39 3/4 inch) and they are now hanging in my reloading room. Because the shot was quite high and at fairly close range, the scull was shattered and i now have only the two loose horns to remember her by.
With Oryx, the females carry the longest horns, but the male's horns are thicker. I am not a trophy hunter, but it is good to honour a fine animal by mounting a trophy.
This is my dad with one of the big Kudu, i think this is the set of horns i have.

Dad with one of the Orix he took on that trip.

Another Orix, same trip

I do not know where in Namibia they hunted, but i think it was quite far north.

 

[baboonstalker]

Bill,
Thank you for the information. There are quite a few products that you mentioned that i have never heard the names of, but i will see if it is available locally. The two books you mentioned earlier, do they cover the propper measuring procedure to fit the shooter to the rifle? That is the first subject i would have to master before setting off and also the one i have the least knowledge about.
You mention that you use water to raise the grain and also that you sand wet. Do you leave the stock to dry out properly again before sealing?
Pieter

 

[stonecreek]

Yes, the hills and vegetation in your dad's photos look more like the northern portion of Namibia. Just speaking of African hunting makes me crave to return! I'm yet to come across someone who has hunted Africa that doesn't pine to go back. BTW, if anyone on the forum is considering planning a trip for plains game, I would be glad to put you in touch with the Voigts. They are great people with a warm sense of humor and treat you quite well. Their accomodations are very comfortable and private, and it is clear after just a few minutes of visiting that Heino loves his game. Theirs is a real working farm (Americans would call it a ranch, since there is no tillable land on it) with 20,000 of its 54,000 hectares (over 200 square miles total!) devoted exclusively to game habitat and is ungrazed by livestock. Ironically, the grazing portion also has very good hunting and is where we took all three of our kudus, several springbok, warthogs, and jackals. The feel you get there is not at all commercial.

A mountain zebra: