Over the years I have seen and handled a couple of Contender carbines with full length forends. I even borrrowed and shot one of them for a day in field conditions to see if I wanted to make some for myself. Unwieldy, ungainly, cumbersom and heavy all come to mind. They do look nice, but are detrimental to actual use IMO. They pretty much require alot more off hand control when opening/closing the action to prevent extra wear or damage to the frame/barrel. The ones I saw and shot were just mounted like standard factory forends to the barrels and so not floated off the barrel at all. They ruined the barrel harmonics so also the accuracy potential, and would have done so even more in changing temps and humidty conditions. It would be considerably harder to securly float them off the barrel. A custom near full length hanger bar mighty get them floated, but still probably wouldn't be very secure. So IMO they make a nice looking wall hanger, but not really a very functional carbine/rifle. I never added one for the carbine barrels to my stable because of what I learned from that days shooting, and instead dolled all mine up with exhibition grade wood grip and stock sets with up to maybe 2"-3" longer than factory forends all floated off the barrels with custom hanger bars. So the only full length (1/4" short of ) forend I did have built to my specs was for a 12" barrel that I shot IHMSA with. The unusual exhibition wood was way more noticeable with this set than the forend length was.
Reminds me of the Bull Pup bolt rifle I just had to build after I saw and handled one almost 4 decades ago. Had mine built from a Remy 600 222 Rem I had, and had high grade wood on it. Looked real nice with the dog leg bolt and vent rib barrel... kind of wicked, futuristic and it was fairly rare for the time. But I actually didn't like shooting it at all. Because I had to hire smiths for the lions share of the work it turned out to be a pretty expensive (for that time) wall hanger that I didn't keep for very long. Sold it easily for a profit, but I wonder if its still intact and in use or just a dust bunny in someones safe or wall collection someplace.
