Article: Boyds AT-One Rifle Stock

[J.Baker]

You can view the page at http://www.savageshooters.com/content.php?437-Boyds-AT-One-Rifle-Stock

[DrThunder88]

Nice write-up and great rifle!

I was pleased to see a recent email ad from Boyds saying they now offer a vertically adjustable buttplate for the AT-One. I was less pleased to learn it isn't an option when outfitting the stock, so it must be purchased separately for $81-87. Perhaps a bit less disappointing is the fact that the new buttplate has to be partly disassembled to be adjusted. I have high hopes Boyds will start offering the pushbutton AT-One comb and buttpad on the Pro Varmint so we can dispense with the silly, plastic panels.

[J.Baker]

Yeah, I really don't know what Boyds was thinking when they decided to go with the plastic panels.

All told there are 15 plastic parts for the AT-One stock:

Four four for the adjustment buttons
One for the cheek piece
One for the bottom of the buttstock
Six Grip panels (Standard, Target and Target Overmold)
Three Forearm pieces (Standard, Target and Target Overmold)


That's a LOT of money in molds for those parts no matter how you look at it - like $50-80k most likely, if not more.

It would have been a LOT cheaper and easier for Boyds to have just offered the AT-One as two different all-wood options with just the adjustable comb and LOP, one being the Standard and the other being the Target. That would have limited the plastic to the four pieces for the adjustment buttons. Their stocks are all machined on CNC equipment so a second unique program wouldn't have been a big deal to create and it would have saved them a lot of money.

[DrThunder88]

That's an excellent point about the cost of the molds. Even if they still wanted to make the stock with customizable grip and forend, it seems like they could have made those parts (and the comb) out of wood. Heck, that would be another level of customization: do you want the color-matching parts or another color that's inexplicably $20 more?

I'm interested to see how or if Boyds builds on the AT-One concept. There's no doubt in my mind that it was thought up as a way to offer cheaper shooters (like me) an alternative to chassis systems. While it's too early to tell, I suspect the AT-One framework doesn't offer the flexibility for customization that helps draw the chassis crowd, and, of course, it won't offer the rigidity that aluminum does. Who knows? Maybe there will be some changes in the AT-One-Point-One!

[J.Baker]

I like the concept, I just don't think it was executed very well with version 1.0. I have this one for sale down in the classifieds, but if nobody buys it I may turn it into a guinea pig. Bondo usage would be heavy as I would eliminate the separate grip and forearm plastic bits, and all those sharp edges would get beveled or rounded over.

[Bowguy]

Thinking they had one of these stocks that would fit my model, I placed an order for one. It didn't take but one glance to see that it would not work on my model 10, short action, bottom bolt release although the steps given on their website said different. If they would start producing one for this model, I would reorder.

[Idaho]

I put an At-One on my 10T-SR .223 and the web of wood on both sides of the action screws cracked. I was able to make repairs with JB Weld epoxy and decided to pillar bed and epoxy bed the action.
The stock just does not feel right to me compared to the Boyd's Pro-Varmint that I have on my other Model 10. The reason is the slop in the both the cheek piece and the butt piece just are not solid. I don't like it. I have another Pro-Varmint on order from Boyds to replace it and plan to pillar and epoxy bed the action as soon as it arrives.

[SageRat Shooter]

The only thing I like about the At-One is the adjustable cheek piece and LOP. They should have just added those options to all of the existing stocks they already had.