Have any of you made your own stocks? How hard was it and what

Haven't done it, but a band saw, drill press, and Dremel for starters. Would love more info on doing it as well

>>35022594
I have a dremel, angle grinder, hand drill and a chisel set. I'm going to just test it on some 2x10 framing lumber first and if it turns out good I'll go for some custom stuff.

The inletting is what I'm worried about the most

>>35022520
Draw knife, band saw, plunge router, dremel, planes , gouges , mallet, wood glue, bedding compound. calipers , sharpies, T square, level
Drill press.


Its a fun hobby.

On the seemingly simpler end, how would one go about adding some checkering to a stock? Standard levergat placement and style of it is what I have in mind.

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>>35022697
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lbK3us_JCY

>>35022697
You can do it pretty ghetto with a glass cutting wheel I bet. The tools used for it are basically just 2 smaller ones.

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>>35022634
You ever tried really detailed work? Might start with something a tad simpler.

>>35022520
I have made several custom stocks for Mausers and some shotguns. I can do a write-up if you fags are interested.

>>35022955
Very helpful, thank you for imparting your wisdom.

>>35023031
Us fags are super interested.

You will need:
Stock scrapers (diamond, flat, round)
Fisher scrapers (small, large)
Farrier's rasp
Band saw
Milling machine (I don't know if you can use a drill press ot something instead, I realize most people don't have these)
Disk sander
Silver pencils
Prussian Blue or other inletting paste.
Yard stick
Flexible ruler
Acraglass or acragel bedding kit
Shitloads of sandpaper 100 grit, 220, 320.
0000 steel wool
FFF stock rubbing compound
Varnish or Danish oil or boiled linseed oil.
Mineral spirits

Probably other stuff that I'm forgetting.

Obviously, you need a wood blank. Walnut is attractive and easy to work with, not terribly expensive.

The first thing you need to do is decide hat general style of stock you're going for. Monte Carlo or classic, cheek-piece or not, is the forend going to be rounded or flat/squared/bell-shaped and so on. What is your length of pull going to be? Measure from the inside of your elbow to halfway up your trigger finger to determine length of pull. Be sure to subtract for the thickness of your recoil pad. (Buy a grind to fit recoil pad).

Now you need to layout the dimensions of your stock on your piece of wood using your silver pencil. It's important to have a good layout as that will make all the difference. You need to mark where your trigger will be, where the barrel meets the receiver, and so on. After everything is laid out, you begin the "slabbing" process.

Slabbing is typically done with a milling machine. You need to make a "true" side of your wood blank. This will be your reference point for all your measurements. You would take a tool called a fly-cutter and true up one side of the wood. I don't know how you would do this without a mill. Maybe you could use a planer? Idk. Once you have it squared up, then you would lay out the top where your inletting will be done, and the bottom where your magazine box/trigger guard will be. You need to basically trace where those part are going to fit into the wood. You then use your milling machine to mill out the area you traced out, being sure to stay inside your lines. The idea is that the metal won't fit inside immediately. You will have to inlet the wood until the metal fits. To do this, you paint up your metal with Prussian Blue and lightly tap it into the wood. There will be blue smudges where the metal is making contact with the wood. You scrape away any blue you see on the wood the paint up the metal again and repeat the process. You might have to repeat this hundreds or even a thousand times before the metal fits properly. It's a huge pain in the ass. Inletting is the most difficult time consuming tedious bullshit but it's the only way to get a proper fit unless you have a stock replicator or something.

>>35022520
This is the kind of shit you pay a master woodworker to do. Do do this right, you need a lot of experience and tools.

There's a reason specialization of labor exists. You can't do it all by yourself.

If you accidentally scrape too much while inletting, you'll end up with gaps between your metal and the wood which can be very unsightly. It's not the end of the world though, these gaps can be filled in with acraglass later. Once you have your block of wood properly inletted, you slab everything a second time, but at an angle instead of square.so, flared out at the butt, getting thinner towards the grip and flaring out a bit more towards the forend. There's specific dimensions you use for this, but I don't know them off the top of my head. At this point you should have something resembling a rifle stock but polygon shaped like a 3d vidya game from 1998 or something. Congratulations because the hard shit is done and it starts getting fun now. You need to "break the corners" using your farrier's rasp. Just cut off the sharp angles basically. Start back towards the butt and work your way up to the front. Try to make the cuts match eachother, you want to keep everything as symmetrical as possible (assuming you're not putting a cheek-piece on it). You want the cuts your making to be level. Place the edge of a ruler against the cuts the see if you have any dips or humps in them and correct them as you go. Once this is done, you should have something that looks even more like a rifle stock, but like a higher-resolution video game.

Now, you're going to switch from the rasp to a smoother file and just start rounding all the edges. This is the final step in the shaping process and you need to figure out any problem areas and get everything exactly how you like it. Get the the grip area to a thickness that fits your hand. You can cut flutes into the grip area if it helps. You can make end caps out of smaller pieces of wood if you want. You just use wood glue to attach them and shape them with a file. Once you have everything 100% how you want it, all shaped and detailed, then you attach your recoil pad and grind it flush with the stock on a disk sander. Now you're ready to finish your stock.

You can finish a stock with just clear varnish or with an oil finish or a combination of the two. There is different approaches to doing this depending on what type of finish you want. Varnish gives it a smooth glassy look and provides good protection from scratches. Oil gives a nice soft matte kind of finish. I like to do a combination of the two. You need to start by sanding out all your file marks with 100 grit sandpaper. Once there are no file marks left, sand it out with 220 until there are no scratches from the 100 grit.

I'll apply the Danish oil with a clean rag and sand with the grain with 320 grit. Let it soak in for a bit, then add another coat and sand against the grain this time. The idea is to make a slurry of oil and wood dust that will fill in the pores of the wood. Repeat this process over and over until the pores in the grain are filled. You can stop here or you can wait a few days for the oil to dry and add clear-coat varnish over the finish. Spray it on, wait 30 minutes, spray it again, and again until you have an orange-peel like texture over the wood. You will then take your 0000 steel wool and rub FFF compound into the finish in a circular motion until the orange-peel texture become smooth like glass.

That's it. I know that was kind of a confusing and shitty write up, but whatever. Feel free to ask me any questions if you need something clarified.

>>35023148
>>35023234
>>35023339
>>35023472
>>35023593
>>35023671

Someone should screen cap this, I'd do it but I'm on mobile.

Oh fuck, I forgot. Once everything is done, you need to use your acraglass bedding kit to get your barreled action a nice snug fit into the wood. You just mix the stuff up and spray all your metal with release agent, then you slather it into the inletting and place your barreled action inside there and let it set. Don't glue your stock to your action by accident because that would be bad.