# Firearms and Shooting > Projects and Home Builds >  New lightweight stock

## chalkeye

As everyone else already figured out, the hogue stock that came with my rifle was really floppy and heavy.
I'd always sort of planned to build one myself, so this was a good excuse to start experimenting.

This project is already 3/4 through, so forgive me if my recollection of the process is a little bit piecemeal.

The first job was bedding & stiffening the hogue, which made a dramatic improvement, particularly to shooting from a bipod.
Heavy though:


Over a kilo, and pretty ugly. And plastic. And common.

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## chalkeye

I started with modelling up the action I had, then converted this into a cutting volume - a digital plug I could subtract from any stock design to fit the howa metal:


This keeps the stock design separate from the action, and means I can tweak the action cutter throughout the prototyping without affecting the stock, and vice-versa. It also means I can theoretically make up another for a different action, and drop it into the same stock design.

This is the oldest concept I can find:


The important bit of this design was to split the stock in half. I originally looked at carbon fibre, but rapidly ruled it out due to it being a massive dick to work with, and difficult (and expensive) to make progressive changes. 

Splitting the stock in half, has a couple of huge advantages:The inletting can be machined in one hit from the insideIt can be hollowed out, and made significantly lighter
I dropped the idea of the carbon fibre foreend pretty quick, but the idea was that it could be a single cavity mold.

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## chalkeye

Redesigned the process & stock to remove all the dicking around difficult, expensive materials:


Ultimately this means some expensive, difficult dicking around with a CNC, due to having to re-datum the material once you've flipped it over. Nothing wildly challenging though.

I also started getting too excited at this stage about how it would look if I spent another thousand bucks on rifle accessories too:


You can see here the lattice structure I looked at for the butt. This area represents the largest unnecessary volume of wood on a traditional stock - though many are bored out, there's still a heap of material that doesn't need to be there. If you look at the area through the pistol grip, this is the most narrow part (and most common failure part) in the majority of rifle stocks, so all that extra mass does nothing.

Similarly the forend doesn't need to be super solid, as it really only serves as a resting surface or bipod & sling attachment point (when you have a floated barrel).

That was my thinking anyway, so I pressed on with making up some plywood blanks for the first prototype. It proved remarkably difficult to find a competent CNC routing guy who could work with 3d files, but eventually it got underway:

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## kimjon

Great CAD skills! Be interesting what the weight is? Have you multiplied its volume by the weight of the wood to estimate it?

Kj

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## chalkeye

The weight of this 1st prototype is about 2/3 that of a full wooden number (by volume), if I recall correctly. Putting this one on the scale is right about 500g (with recoil pad, pillars & new trigger guard)


There were a number of issues with this design, some which were expected, some not:
I got the palm swell bit really wrong - this required a fair bit of filing & adjustment. Unfortunately this resulted in breaking into the internal void - not a huge issue, as the inside is sealed before the halves were glued together.The foreend was REALLY hollow - fine as far as deflection & stiffness, but it had the result of resonating when you cycled the boltI also screwed a sling stud into this, which obviously ripped out after not very longThe LOP was a little short, so I added a big dumb heavy bit to the backThe comb height was too low - something I reckon I should fix with the stock design, rather than the rough foam & tape solution
So, on with redesigning for the P2 prototype:

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## Tommy

And all of this will be easy enough to mirror for lefties of course. Nice work!

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## Rushy

It never ceases to amaze me how clever some of you buggers are.  I don't for the life of me understand why you do it, but it fascinates me that you do.

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## chalkeye

> And all of this will be easy enough to mirror for lefties of course. Nice work!


Yeah, that's a nice thing about the process - it should be easy peasy to mirror for lefties, or different actions.

Equally, different geometries like LOP, comb height etc should be fairly straightforward to change

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## Nibblet

> It never ceases to amaze me how clever some of you buggers are.  I don't for the life of me understand why you do it, but it fascinates me that you do.


+1.
Just finished saying something similar to the wife (not that she cared) before reading this

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## 7mmsaum

> The weight of this 1st prototype is about 2/3 that of a full wooden number (by volume), if I recall correctly. Putting this one on the scale is right about 500g (with recoil pad, pillars & new trigger guard)
> 
> 
> There were a number of issues with this design, some which were expected, some not:
> I got the palm swell bit really wrong - this required a fair bit of filing & adjustment. Unfortunately this resulted in breaking into the internal void - not a huge issue, as the inside is sealed before the halves were glued together.The foreend was REALLY hollow - fine as far as deflection & stiffness, but it had the result of resonating when you cycled the boltI also screwed a sling stud into this, which obviously ripped out after not very longThe LOP was a little short, so I added a big dumb heavy bit to the backThe comb height was too low - something I reckon I should fix with the stock design, rather than the rough foam & tape solution
> So, on with redesigning for the P2 prototype:


Let me know when you have made one for a rem model 7




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## Danny

What CAD program did you use?
Well done, VERY clever indeed.

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## Danny

Solid Works.

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## chalkeye

Yep, modelled in SolidWorks, all the rendering is done in Blender though.

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## kotuku

another one of those pretty bloody awesome talents that inhabit this forum.keep up the good work is inspiring!!

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## Scouser

That is awesome @chalkeye well done mate  :Thumbsup:

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## chalkeye

Prototype 2 milling in progress. This one is in red beech, each half is laminated from 2 blanks (resulting in 4 laminations across the whole stock width). This should give it good stability, hopefully without killing the nice aesthetic of the timber. Again, it will be sealed fully - inside and out, so shouldn't be super affected by moisture anyway.




> Let me know when you have made one for a rem model 7


I need to resolve the design a bit more before I do any for others! I'll also need to borrow an action to measure for the inletting (or get someone to measure it up for me).

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## chalkeye



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## veitnamcam

Would be ridiculouse but you should do a Ti one just because.

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## 7mmsaum

> Would be ridiculouse but you should do a Ti one just because.
> 
> Sent from my SM-G800Y using Tapatalk


For a model 7.       :Have A Nice Day: 


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## veitnamcam

> For a model 7.      
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


Now that would just be silly.

Altho it could be made with a decent lenght of pull thus vastly improving the 7

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## Rushy

Very clever. Watching with interest.

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## matto1234

Awesome work! Let me know when you are taking orders  :Thumbsup:

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## chalkeye

> Very clever. Watching with interest.


Don't worry, we're nearly up to the bit where I notice a hilariously dumb mistake in the design  :Yaeh Am Not Durnk:

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## shift14

> 


That's some clever shit right there.

B

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## BRADS

> Would be ridiculouse but you should do a Ti one just because.
> 
> Sent from my SM-G800Y using Tapatalk


Where's the guy that makes those ti actions?
Now we are talking light 


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## chalkeye

> Where's the guy that makes those ti actions?
> Now we are talking light 
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


Using the current design, my (admittedly questionable) math gives me 3.7kg for a Ti version - I'll stick with timber for now...

(edited the maths, i was way out)

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## chalkeye

Fitted the dowels, finished the bulk of the inletting (I thought) and sealed the inside:


Gluing the two halves together, always a bit scary:

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## craigc

Very very cool.

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## Rushy

Very talented chalkeye.

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## Tahr

Amazing talent.

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## Shooter

Great idea mate.  Would be interested in final costs... You could start a wee sideline business with a product like this.

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## Friwi

Hey chalkeye, you should join forces with homebrew , the two of you could do marvels :-)
He needs a stock for his sharp rifle!

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## chalkeye

> Great idea mate.  Would be interested in final costs... You could start a wee sideline business with a product like this.


I'd absolutely love to do that. Currently I've got a lot of work to do finishing this prototype and perfecting the design. 
Scaling it up to be cost effective would have it's own challenges (namely a CNC router and place to put it), but I'm definitely game!

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## robhughes-games

where abouts in the country are you mate?

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## chalkeye

Dunedin

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## ebf

Amazeballs !!!  :Thumbsup:

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## kotuku

holy shit batman  :Redbullsmiley: .this version is even more amazing than the last. :Pacman: someone is looking at a very special rifle   doozey of an xmas present :Thumbsup:

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## William

Here is the Question, Would you be keen on producing a few of these maybe just rough halves? I have 3 Howas and one in long action. 
And if so what sort of cost would we be talking,
IF you just ran them on the CNC and I took them from there.

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## timattalon

[QUOTE=chalkeye;418001]
There were a number of issues with this design, some which were expected, some not:
]
[*]The foreend was REALLY hollow - fine as far as deflection & stiffness, but it had the result of resonating when you cycled the bolt

[*]I also screwed a sling stud into this, which obviously ripped out after not very long



I have a couple ideas that may be too late. To stop the sling stud pulling out we use the nut type that has a nut on the inside and a washer to spread the load over a greater surface area on the internal. You could also use a layer of fibre glass or similar to help there. The second version where it is not a single cavity looks to be a better version / idea. 

All the best and I watch with anticipation.

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## chalkeye

> Here is the Question, Would you be keen on producing a few of these maybe just rough halves? I have 3 Howas and one in long action. 
> And if so what sort of cost would we be talking,
> IF you just ran them on the CNC and I took them from there.


Have sent you a PM. Long story short, this is still in the prototype phase. As you can see I'm about to make a hilarious stuff-up, so I want to be much more happy with the design before I make them for others!




> I have a couple ideas that may be too late. To stop the sling stud pulling out we use the nut type that has a nut on the inside and a washer to spread the load over a greater surface area on the internal. You could also use a layer of fibre glass or similar to help there. The second version where it is not a single cavity looks to be a better version / idea. 
> 
> All the best and I watch with anticipation.


For the P2 prototype I made an insert inside the stock around the sling stud area, for exactly this reason. Unfortunately I rushed, really and it's poking through a little bit, but that's an easy fix for P3:



Test fitting of the action went pretty well - because of the large step size I specified getting the parts cut (to reduce time & cost) they still needed quite a bit of hand-fitting.


Measured twice and cut once doesn't really work if you measure the wrong thing:

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## kimjon

Just call it a short action?

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## Camgibbler

Amazing work Chalkeye, I'll keep watching for updates. I love the first prototype in ply, it has that great laminate look. 

I might hold off on a Boyds an wait for you to start mass production!  :Have A Nice Day:

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## GWH

Only just spied this thread, that is very cool indeed, and 500g is well light.

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## quentin

Nice work there dude. Definitely a big step up from the spearguns.  :Thumbsup:

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## chalkeye

Thanks Q. I have some more pics since I re-shaped the stock - will put an update together in the next few days.

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## Shooter

:Thumbsup:  Looking forward to the progress shots.

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## chalkeye

Bit of catching up to do here - mostly recovering from my catastrophically dumb mistake. If you missed it, there's the perfect amount of clearance to cycle the bolt, but not enough to remove it! It's pretty embarrassing, but that's what prototypes are for.

First step is to chop out the absolute minimum of material required to remove the bolt:


You can also see here that I've bedded the action.

Then comes blending the new shape in. A lot of work with rasps, files etc:

This was a bit scary as I was more or less free-handing the design, rather than having spent hours working it out in CAD and letting a robot do the fine work for me.

Then I shaped a plug to go in the cavity that was left behind, and glued it in place. I should have taken more care with the fit of this, as I'm not really happy with how it turned out - but the next prototype won't have this mistake to cover up, so I'm not too worried  :Have A Nice Day: 


When the epoxy had cured, I started sanding off the machining marks and smoothing things down.


Because the timber is so sensitive to grime and dirt, I layed down a thin coat of epoxy just to seal everything up. Really brings the colour of the wood through!

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## chalkeye

I spose I can probably skip ahead a little bit now, got a few new bits back - shortened barrel, DPT, fluted bolt and unnecessarily expensive trigger guard.
I ended up rushing the last bit of sanding on the epoxy, but I'm confident I can re-finish it pretty well.



I've already got a big long list of stuff I want to change for the 3rd prototype;
- re-design the comb for a bit more fatness, and the proper clearance for the bolt
- recess the trigger guard properly, and just buy a Remington aluminium one (or similar) rather than get one CNC'd in China  :X X: 
- flatter forend for better sitting on a bag or harris-style bipod
- skinnier grip (particularly at the very bottom
- figure something out for grip... not super keen on going down the path of chequering, but I'll see.
- better channel forming around the barrel, and less ridiculous structure in the forend (sling stud reinforcing)
- design the swivel sling studs into the stock, rather than add them later

A whole bunch more stuff will no doubt shake out as I use it some more, but for now I'm very happy with how it handles  :Have A Nice Day:

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## veitnamcam

More pictures for those of us that lack imagination please! 

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## Shootm

Just read the whole thread and what a talented bugger you are. 
Awesome work.

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## Friwi

Very nice.
For the grip, there is a technic where you braise together three rounded point nails so their points are at the same level( you might have to cut the heads of two of them) and you gently mark the grip area buy hammering them in your stock. It is the  style of finish of a lots of target rifles handles.

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## Tuidog

What an awesome thread.  As I was looking through I saw your mistake with the comb height on the redesign and thought "Its too high, the bolt will foul". an idea for grip though lay out a pattern and use a ball end on you dremel to make round divots, you won't have to cut in far.  Glad you went with Talley one piece rings rather than a rail.  I'm guessing that's where you ended up with the high comb height.

Great stuff, well done.

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## paddygonebush

What ply wood were you using when you were looking at making a laminate one?

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## chalkeye

The 1st prototype in ply was just cheapo pine. The 2nd prototype is 4x red beech laminates. I dunno if the laminates are strictly necessary, but it gives me peace of mind that it's very unlikely to move with normal moisture / heat fluctuations.

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## ANTSMAN

awesome awesome chalkeye , how you like the exped?

"figure something out for grip... not super keen on going down the path of chequering,"  what bout inlet epoxied rubber strips?

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## William

I'm still keen to hear about the next run,
Why have you chosen not to use he factory bottom metal? is it just to reduce weight?
I'd be very keen to use the original plus the other mods you mentioned,
I was planning if you could machine me the roughs to do my own stippling in the grip and fore end.

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