Thread: My Shrunken Wood... need advice on No 4 Enfield.

Lee Enfield No 4 shoots 2" vertical and 6"-8" horizontal spread at 100 metres with military ladder diopter sight, HXP BT FMJs. Seems to me a stock problem.... since of course I'm a crack shot (-:

On examination of the patient, the barrel fore-end touches against the left/bottom of the fore-end of the stock whereas it should be free floating there (as it is centre barrel bedded, but it is not even resting fully into the fibreglass centre bedding pillar). Further back, only the left one of the twin recoil lugs is in firm touch with the stock, from checking with some sprinkled flour. The rear transverse steel bar is 1 millimetre ahead off of the wrist band, leading me to conclude there has been some serios stock shrinkage.

The woodwork is varnished, don't know since when.

My tentative plan is to strip the varnish off chemically, then soak the stock in linseed oil + wood resin turps (keeping it smelling like a forest!), partly because the gun will look better that way but I also hope some of the shrinkage / warping is reversible by a good penetrating oil concoction, but is that hoping for too much? How much shrinkage is reversible?
Should I just focus on doing a general fibreglass bedding job and forget about trying to reverse shrinkage/warping? What do others do in this situation?