• Stiffening the Axis Synthetic Stock

    It seems like once a week someone comes on the forum and asks the question: "What can I do to stiffen up the factory synthetic stock on my Axis?" Most who venture down this road eventually realize their time, effort and money exhausted on this endeavor were in vain and ultimately purchase an aftermarket replacement stock. None-the-less there are those who insist they're smarter than the hundreds (if not thousands) who have come before them and press forward with this project, and for those folks we offer the following example of the best possible way to stiffen up the factory stock. This process will not eliminate all of the flex, but will eliminate a great deal of it making the stock much more serviceable than it was as delivered from Savage.The Axis stock is prone to extreme flex in two key areas, the wrist and the recoil lug pocket. As such these two areas must be reinforced if you want your efforts to be even mildly successful. Bracing in the forend must extend under the recoil lug and into the plastic behind it to reinforce that area. If you only brace the forend and stop forward of the recoil lug pocket you are actually just worsening the problem because the flex point is in the recoil lug pocket and now you've added mass forward of that flex point.

    Bracing in the wrist area is trickier to do. Looking at the factory stock it's clear to see that the weakest area - the area with the least amount of material, is from the rear of the trigger to the back of the safety bracket. There just isn't enough meat (polymer) in this area to keep it from flexing, and there's really no way to stiffen it up with additional bracing as there's no room to. That being the case the only alternative is to epoxy the separate trigger guard piece in place so it is no longer removable.

    The second step to stiffening up the wrist is to drill a hole length-wise through the grip so that a rod can be epoxied in place to eliminate the flex in it. As forum member caymen last recommends below, the best place to drill is through the grip just above where the trigger guard locating tab fits with the hole terminating in the void within the buttstock.

    ~MrFurious




    I stiffened the stock front with a carbon fiber arrow and epoxy, the but has a 12" aluminum gutter spike and half filled with epoxy, and the trigger guard permanently fixed with super glue.

    I welded together a 14" drill bit and drilled from the front all the way under the recoil lug into the trigger housing cavity. then put two sections of CF arrow in.







    I fixed them in place with epoxy putty, and filled some of the front sections with Devcon epoxy.





    The same drill bit was used to make a hole in the but stock just above the square hole where the trigger guard peg fits, glued the trigger guard in place and placed a 12" aluminum gutter spike in the hole and half filled the but stock with epoxy.





    I also sanded the barrel channel a little, so a business card could easily slide all the way back between the stock and barrel, the whole stock seems to be more stable and you have to squeeze pretty hard to get the barrel to touch, no problem shooting from a bipod or bags.


    Comments 1 Comment
    1. WV1951's Avatar
      WV1951 -
      Nice job. Hopefully, this will be seen before the proverbial question is asked.