LOW BUDGET .22 SIL RIFLE/TRAINER - basic stock mod+chpiece
Posted: Wed Jan 27, 2010 10:04 pm
This update is concerning the basic stock modification concerning freefloating the barrel along with a cheekpiece installation.
As doing double duty as a trainer and silhouette rifle, I had to limit the amount of modifications I can perform to stay within the rules of smallbore silhouette hunter class (8.5 lbs total weight, no shorter than 8” foreend, no cheekpiece, no bull barrel, no less than 2 lb trigger) . When it came to the stock, my 1st priority was to ensure a free floating barrel. Although it came somewhat "free floated", the amount of flex in the stock was substantial enough to cause interference with the barrel. The receiver / barrel is held on by two mounting bolts, of the allen type. Make sure the rifle is unloaded, simply unscrew both bolts, take out the receiver / barrel and place to the side. You can put the mounting bolts back in to the unit to keep them from getting lost or damaged. Then remove the butt plate.
My first look at the stock produced no red flags, and seemed
surprisingly "beefy" in the receiver section. This beefiness is nice, as it will allow you to do some mild to wild modifications here, which some semi wild ones were done and will be shown in a future post. There appears to be a slot where it looks as if there should be a recoil lug that fits, which did seem unusual. Being able to take a closer look at the receiver with the stock off, it apears the receiver has a gap in it and the barrel, allowing one to upgrade to bull barrel easily, which is nice.
Back to the free float, the nice thing about the "cheapness" of the stock is that it also has an outline around the barrel channel to be cut out if this stock was to have a bull barrel installed in it. This'll give us a good guideline to where we want to stop removing material. I left the bipod attached to the stock, as it helped hold the stock in place while sanding.
You are going to need 2 things: a small piece of pipe (3/4"pipe, about 4" long seemed to be the right size) and sand paper. I'm using 150 grit as that is what I have on hand. The pipe will be used as a sanding block to remove stock material, will give an even amount even amount sanded on both sides, give a nice rounded contour to the barrel channel walls, and
give a nice round shape to the end of the stock. Simply wrap the sandpaper around the pipe, stroke back and forth until the material is removed to the bull barrel line, and that's pretty much it. This took about 1 hour to accomplish.
before, you can see the gap between the pipe and stock...
after....
I stood clear of where the receiver actually meets the channel in the stock by about 1/4" as it seems the receiver is actually set nicely in this area. There appears to be a slot where it looks as if there should be a recoil lug that fits, which did seem unusual.
I then added a front sling stud to just in front of the receiver, as that's going to be my new bipod attachment area. I like it there as it is more of a pivot point to get on target quicker, transfers more "resting weight" back towards the receiver, and is easier to manipulate the bipod adjustments. It's also just far enough ahead to where it doesn't interfere with the changing of magazines. Most "nifty" tactical rifles have multiple sling / bipod mounting points so for the low price of $4.99 at Dick's sporting goods, this can be achieved (the Walmart studs came with swivels, and were $8.99). I then concentrated on the molding marks around the entire stock, making sure they are sanded smooth. This took less than 1/2 hour.
You can stop here as it would be the very basic of a stock mod, then mask off the receiver area (for adhesion of bedding material later if you choose to do so), wipe the stock clean with acetone or alcohol, and spray paint with whatever color / paint you would like. This is about as basic as you can get. The basic paint took about 1.5 hours.
As the saying goes, "anything worth doing is worth overdoing", and I'll show in a future post "Advanced stock mods" for more involve stock modifications before I actually painted it.
After boresighting the rifle at home and shooting at the range, it was apparant that the amount of drop on the comb of the stock warrants a cheekpiece for better eye alignment, which equals consistancy / accuracy and comfort. I wanted something low budget, adjustable, removeable (for silhoutte rules), and presentable. After searching Walmart for something that can be fabricated (including shin gaurds, recoil pads, plastic pipe), the amount of time to put into fabbing and the applicablity of being easily removed and resetable became an issue and those ideas were scrapped.
For $34.00 + 8.00 SH, I had purchase a Command Arms adjustable cheek piece and a 6" AR15 handgaurd accessory rail. I had used this setup before, and was very pleased with the results, so went ahead with the investment. The cheekpiece can be adjusted up, down, and when the rail is trimmed to 3" and mounted to the side of the stock, the cheekpiece could be moved forward and backward.
So the first thing to do is to cut the rail to a 3" section, there are round lips on the bottom to fit into an AR handgaurd, file or sand them down (the rail is nylon/plastic so it will be easy). Slip the cheekpiece on the rail (the rail has a slope to it, point the fatter part towards front of the stock to compensate for the contour of the stock). now position the cheekpiece / rail combo on the stock, using a pen or marker as a temporary shim so that you'll get the correct height and forward / rearward centering....
Once you find the "sweet spot" mark the bottom of the rail - i've found that if you cant the front of the cheekpiece slightly forward, you'll actually be adding a little more adjustability and comfort againt your cheek...
Attach rail with screws, drilling pilot holes first. Make sure the screw used doesn't pertrude above the recessed areas for them. Once attached a little flat black paint on the screw heads...
Reattach cheek piece, adjust for fit / eye alignment. In the event you use the other 3" section of rail on another firearm along with the cheek piece, you can make a notch out little mark on the adjustment side so you can always come back to your adjustment for each seperate rifle.
The nice thing is that the cheeckpiece and bipod can be removed in about 30 seconds and the rifle becomes a legal hunter class rifle for smallbore silhoutte. It took about 1.5 hours to do the cheekpiece including trimming the rail and adjusting the cheekpiece.
I had taken it to the range, there was more comfort in shooting due to the cheekpiece. Since the barrel was kind of "freefloaty" as remarked in the first post of this series, the above project was mostly to make sure it stayed that way. My groups did improve, especially at 100 yards, but I'd honestly have to say not by leaps and bounds from the first range report, and is probably contributed to the better eye alignment. The trigger still stinks and will be cvoered in a future post also.
I had also added a sling to the mix, a 1.25" wide "militaryish" no frills nylon sling from Walmart ($16.97), flying under the Winchester banner, and it came with swivels.
I wanted to try to keep the project under $300.00, however it looks as if you like the creature comforts and more accuracy, $300.00 is going to be tough to meet, as it already has been passed:
TOTALS:
RIFLE..........$127.00
BIPOD........... 39.97
B. GROUND CHECK...5.00
SCOPE.............69.97
RINGS............. 9.47
ULTRA BLACK KRYLON 4.44
STUDS............. 4.99
CHEEKPIECE+RAIL...42.00
SLING.............16.97
TAX...............19.19
= $339.00
TOTAL TIME FOR THESE OPERATIONS = 4.5
OVERALL TIME = 7.5 HOURS
As doing double duty as a trainer and silhouette rifle, I had to limit the amount of modifications I can perform to stay within the rules of smallbore silhouette hunter class (8.5 lbs total weight, no shorter than 8” foreend, no cheekpiece, no bull barrel, no less than 2 lb trigger) . When it came to the stock, my 1st priority was to ensure a free floating barrel. Although it came somewhat "free floated", the amount of flex in the stock was substantial enough to cause interference with the barrel. The receiver / barrel is held on by two mounting bolts, of the allen type. Make sure the rifle is unloaded, simply unscrew both bolts, take out the receiver / barrel and place to the side. You can put the mounting bolts back in to the unit to keep them from getting lost or damaged. Then remove the butt plate.
My first look at the stock produced no red flags, and seemed
surprisingly "beefy" in the receiver section. This beefiness is nice, as it will allow you to do some mild to wild modifications here, which some semi wild ones were done and will be shown in a future post. There appears to be a slot where it looks as if there should be a recoil lug that fits, which did seem unusual. Being able to take a closer look at the receiver with the stock off, it apears the receiver has a gap in it and the barrel, allowing one to upgrade to bull barrel easily, which is nice.
Back to the free float, the nice thing about the "cheapness" of the stock is that it also has an outline around the barrel channel to be cut out if this stock was to have a bull barrel installed in it. This'll give us a good guideline to where we want to stop removing material. I left the bipod attached to the stock, as it helped hold the stock in place while sanding.
You are going to need 2 things: a small piece of pipe (3/4"pipe, about 4" long seemed to be the right size) and sand paper. I'm using 150 grit as that is what I have on hand. The pipe will be used as a sanding block to remove stock material, will give an even amount even amount sanded on both sides, give a nice rounded contour to the barrel channel walls, and
give a nice round shape to the end of the stock. Simply wrap the sandpaper around the pipe, stroke back and forth until the material is removed to the bull barrel line, and that's pretty much it. This took about 1 hour to accomplish.
before, you can see the gap between the pipe and stock...
after....
I stood clear of where the receiver actually meets the channel in the stock by about 1/4" as it seems the receiver is actually set nicely in this area. There appears to be a slot where it looks as if there should be a recoil lug that fits, which did seem unusual.
I then added a front sling stud to just in front of the receiver, as that's going to be my new bipod attachment area. I like it there as it is more of a pivot point to get on target quicker, transfers more "resting weight" back towards the receiver, and is easier to manipulate the bipod adjustments. It's also just far enough ahead to where it doesn't interfere with the changing of magazines. Most "nifty" tactical rifles have multiple sling / bipod mounting points so for the low price of $4.99 at Dick's sporting goods, this can be achieved (the Walmart studs came with swivels, and were $8.99). I then concentrated on the molding marks around the entire stock, making sure they are sanded smooth. This took less than 1/2 hour.
You can stop here as it would be the very basic of a stock mod, then mask off the receiver area (for adhesion of bedding material later if you choose to do so), wipe the stock clean with acetone or alcohol, and spray paint with whatever color / paint you would like. This is about as basic as you can get. The basic paint took about 1.5 hours.
As the saying goes, "anything worth doing is worth overdoing", and I'll show in a future post "Advanced stock mods" for more involve stock modifications before I actually painted it.
After boresighting the rifle at home and shooting at the range, it was apparant that the amount of drop on the comb of the stock warrants a cheekpiece for better eye alignment, which equals consistancy / accuracy and comfort. I wanted something low budget, adjustable, removeable (for silhoutte rules), and presentable. After searching Walmart for something that can be fabricated (including shin gaurds, recoil pads, plastic pipe), the amount of time to put into fabbing and the applicablity of being easily removed and resetable became an issue and those ideas were scrapped.
For $34.00 + 8.00 SH, I had purchase a Command Arms adjustable cheek piece and a 6" AR15 handgaurd accessory rail. I had used this setup before, and was very pleased with the results, so went ahead with the investment. The cheekpiece can be adjusted up, down, and when the rail is trimmed to 3" and mounted to the side of the stock, the cheekpiece could be moved forward and backward.
So the first thing to do is to cut the rail to a 3" section, there are round lips on the bottom to fit into an AR handgaurd, file or sand them down (the rail is nylon/plastic so it will be easy). Slip the cheekpiece on the rail (the rail has a slope to it, point the fatter part towards front of the stock to compensate for the contour of the stock). now position the cheekpiece / rail combo on the stock, using a pen or marker as a temporary shim so that you'll get the correct height and forward / rearward centering....
Once you find the "sweet spot" mark the bottom of the rail - i've found that if you cant the front of the cheekpiece slightly forward, you'll actually be adding a little more adjustability and comfort againt your cheek...
Attach rail with screws, drilling pilot holes first. Make sure the screw used doesn't pertrude above the recessed areas for them. Once attached a little flat black paint on the screw heads...
Reattach cheek piece, adjust for fit / eye alignment. In the event you use the other 3" section of rail on another firearm along with the cheek piece, you can make a notch out little mark on the adjustment side so you can always come back to your adjustment for each seperate rifle.
The nice thing is that the cheeckpiece and bipod can be removed in about 30 seconds and the rifle becomes a legal hunter class rifle for smallbore silhoutte. It took about 1.5 hours to do the cheekpiece including trimming the rail and adjusting the cheekpiece.
I had taken it to the range, there was more comfort in shooting due to the cheekpiece. Since the barrel was kind of "freefloaty" as remarked in the first post of this series, the above project was mostly to make sure it stayed that way. My groups did improve, especially at 100 yards, but I'd honestly have to say not by leaps and bounds from the first range report, and is probably contributed to the better eye alignment. The trigger still stinks and will be cvoered in a future post also.
I had also added a sling to the mix, a 1.25" wide "militaryish" no frills nylon sling from Walmart ($16.97), flying under the Winchester banner, and it came with swivels.
I wanted to try to keep the project under $300.00, however it looks as if you like the creature comforts and more accuracy, $300.00 is going to be tough to meet, as it already has been passed:
TOTALS:
RIFLE..........$127.00
BIPOD........... 39.97
B. GROUND CHECK...5.00
SCOPE.............69.97
RINGS............. 9.47
ULTRA BLACK KRYLON 4.44
STUDS............. 4.99
CHEEKPIECE+RAIL...42.00
SLING.............16.97
TAX...............19.19
= $339.00
TOTAL TIME FOR THESE OPERATIONS = 4.5
OVERALL TIME = 7.5 HOURS
