Contender forearm

[oldandslow]

In an attempt to wake this forum up I decided to post about a little project I have started. I'm a fan of the contender rifles but they don't lend themselves to benchrest shooting too well with that rounded and tapered forearm. I like to do my load development off my rest and load development or experimentation if you wish to call it that is about the only centerfire shooting I do anymore. Back in the summer I glued up  a couple of pieces of 3/4" x 1 1/2" oak with a piece of 1/4" walnut I had laying in between them to get the needed width and made a straight fore end for my rifle. It made a big difference shooting off the rest. It was simple except for the cutout at the rear and even that wasn't difficult using a milling attachment on my lathe. All the rest consisted of milling a 1" groove for the barrel, shaping the ends, and drilling the attachment holes.

I stained it and it didn't look too bad color wise with the factory stock but the factory stock doesn't have enough rise to work well with a scope IMO so I put a thumbhole stock on it. It is really dark walnut and the stained oak fore end really isn't that appealing in contrast with it. I ordered a piece of walnut from Rocklers that should match pretty well but if it doesn't there is always dye. I ripped my boards and milled them for a good fit, drilled a couple of blind dowel holes to keep everything in place while clamping and it's now waiting on the gorilla glue to set up.

If it turns out satisfactory I'll post a picture when done.

[DEACONLLB]

I had a friend who did a lot of sawmill work and he gave me some square walnut pieces and I have made a number of forends that were just slightly rounded on the bottom edges but flat across the center. On the top part I routered a concave to dress it up and they really looked nice. I found that Minwax stain in what they called gun stock walnut was a very good match for the but stock. I bought router bits that were the right size for the barrel channel and used my router table to make the barrel channel. I used a harbor Freight multi tool with a very narrow blade to make that angle cut in the back of the forend that is the hard part in making contender forends. I even made me a Beaver tail type forend for my contender 410 shotgun barrel. I have even made some pistol grip caps to replace the plastic one using Pecan and walnut laminated wood looks nice

Deaconllb 

[oldandslow]

I dropped this topic as it was shown no interest. The forearm worked great but I have since replaced the stock which is really too low for scope use with a thumb hole stock which works great. The new stock is a very dark walnut and the the first fore end looked very out of place so I ordered a piece of walnut and redid my forearm which matches the stock in color very closely now with no stain needed. I also replaced the scope with one a little more powerful and am now waiting on a decent day to shoot the gun when I don't have other obligations to fulfill.

I do nearly all my stock work on a milling/drilling machine using end mills, router bits and forstner bits. I did the rear cut out on my lathe using an end mill and the lathe's milling attachment. I used a 1" round nosed router bit for the barrel channel so it's free floated and only touches the barrel at the two screw lugs with a close fitting flat washer between the stock and barrel at each lug. I also milled two 5/16" slots in the bottom to increase air flow around the barrel in an attempt to to help it cool a little quicker.

[DEACONLLB]

It seems that to get any response on any thing it just does not happen unless it is around the pot belie or todays news or the election about the same on the other site. Not like a few years ago when you had a response on about any post, could put something up for sale and it be sold in hours, all the old members seem to have moved on or just not posting   Very sad.

Deaconllb