Thread: 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??