Thread: Walnut Stock Build

Thanks for the responses all.
So looking through the gun cabinet my Anschutz 1717 .17hmr was chosen as the restocking victim candidate. I thought I had a picture of it in the original stock but can’t find it at the moment, so rather than reassemble it for a photo here’s an example I borrowed from the net. Being the silhouette version it’s got the 2-stage trigger and shortened barrel as per the picture, but the magazine is a bit longer (the picture is a .22lr 1712). Stock is just like the photo – comfortable but not exactly elegant to my eyes, and made from straight grain stained walnut with very little figure.

Anyway, I’ll come back to the stock. There were a few mods to the steelwork first. This is a nice rifle; very accurate, but actually with a couple of issues you might not expect for the money they ask for one of these.
First up, when I received the rifle it misfired about 40% of the time and accuracy was poor. This was probably why the seller offered it for so cheap (not that he put that little detail on his auction). A little google searching told me that this was a common problem on the magnum side-safety versions, with the solution being aftermarket firing pin springs. US$23 spring set later and it was sorted – 100% ignition and immediately better accuracy.

Problem #2 was that the side safety was very stiff to operate. I relocated one leg of the tensioning spring – problem solved.

#3 was more involved. While feeding of rounds loaded with polymer-tipped (vmax) bullets was fine, when using hollow-point TNT rounds the top round would hang up on the breech face. The solution was supposed to be the improved 2nd or 3rd gen magazine. I bought a 3rd gen magazine (not cheap!) and it was worse. Now I don’t like to let things like this beat me, and when I looked closely I figured the best way to correct the problem was not with the magazine but with the housing – presenting the magazine up to the bolt at a slightly different angle. Solution was to replace it. Only thing I kept from the assembly was the spring.








Feeding now 100% with both mags and both bullet types.
There’s been a couple more tweaks here and there – grinding the safety lever under the stock line and reshaping the action tang (I’ll come back to that next post). Still on the list are a new trigger blade and a teardrop bolt handle.