Boyd's Laminate Stock for 110 Long Action

I've been working on a 110 LA conversion from a .243 to 22-250. I bought a 1989 model with a blind magazine for the donor action and ordered a varmint 22-250 barrel from Criterion. I also ordered a Boyd's Pro-Varmint stock in wood laminate without any inletting. I have a lot of experience in woodworking and had the tools and machines to do the work myself. It also let me control the fitting of the heavy barrel from the get-go.

I measured the depth of the receiver channel on the original stock and routed the new receiver channel to the same depth. The fit is good on both the receiver and barrel. Once the receiver and barrel were fitted. I made two pillars from aluminum, bolted them to the receiver, applied devcon 10100, and set and clamped the barreled action in place to dry. I then removed more wood around the pillars in order to install bedding to their level. So far, so good.

Now I come to the point of this post. It is mainly for others doing this conversion to be aware of.
So, after drying, I'm now ready to machine out the mag well. Again I carefully measure the depth of the old stock mag well along with measurements taken on the magazine depth itself.
Using my milling machine, I cut the well to depth only to find that the router bit is cutting almost through the bottom wood. I mean within 1/16". Thin enough to punch a finger through it.

Blind magazine? Now what do I do? The spring in the mag well pushes against this wood when loading ammo.
My solution was to route out the bottom and make a 1/8" aluminum cover plate and inlet it into the bottom. This works ok and looks good. Like it was made to go there.
Because it is inletted, I'm still going to have to take about 1/16" off the bottom of the magazine as the magazine is close to being flush with the bottom wood.

As I said, for anyone contemplating using the wood laminate stock with the blind mag, it may be a problem if you set the action to the depth the factory sets it. I guess you could set it higher but I don't think that it would look good.

Neal