Quote Originally Posted by DrThunder88 View Post
I've gotten my mitts on my last Boyds stock, and it too has the plastic escutcheon. Fortunately I was able to get it out of the stock without damaging much (besides the piece itself). Unfortunately, it appears to be injection molded plastic as expected, which begs the question: why even bother? Not "Why bother putting that on a laminate stock?" so much as "Why bother getting a Boyds stock to begin with?" I mean the factory stock is injection molded nylon, but Savage saw fit to put steel pillars and metal contact points in the design and did so with the bottom line clearly in view.

Anyway, I've got both the escutcheon and magazine latch plate (which also is some sort of thermoplastic resin) out and have installed a steel spacer in the escutcheon's stead. I had thought about duplicating the latch plate in aluminum or steel (or even some phenolic resin) via waterjet, but the setup cost alone would kill me. Either way, that's not an area of terrific concern for me...unless we got a group of people interested!
On that note, is there a readily available option to replace the plastic ones?