Every now and then when I'm messing with Contenders, I think "I have wood. I have tools. I know how to do stuff...Why am I not making my own dang Contender stocks?!?"
I'm always a little stymied by the odd geometry involved in the otherwise simple milling and inletting for a Contender frame. Or rather I should say I'm always a little too lazy to reverse engineer to the point of making a couple of jigs. Over the last couple of days I got a little obsessed and dug further than I have in the past. I was able to get a close enough measurement on some of the angles to lay out a couple of simple jigs for running the blank over the table saw and holding on the drill press. and was able to get far enough to actually hang a hunk of wood on a frame. I used a piece of scrap as a crash test dummy but it went right in place. :) It's still early in the process but with a few tweaks and a little work refining the profile, I'll be ready to prep a piece decent wood and make something usable. :)
I have an old factory stock that has a nice palm grip area and nice general profile but I wanted to get the cheek rise a little closer to the High Plains Pegasus shape. That's the most comfortable and stock I've shot.
We'll see how this one shapes up but the initial geometry seems to get a nice cheek weld and put me right on a good scope picture. That forend is one that I threw together last week out of a mahogany scrap I had laying around.
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