I'm glad people seem to like what I did, but keep in mind that I had a quality product from Gunstocks Inc to work with. That's some of the nicest grain I've seen in maple in a long time. The wood was dry and about as hard as fiddleback gets, so it was easy to shape without tearing and splintering. Also, he was good enough to do a couple of things for me at no charge. One was to leave out that miserable swivel hole in the fore end. The schnabel type fore end just didn't have enough room on it for a swivel, at least not the way I hold a rifle. On the original pallet wood stock, which I shaped pretty much like the maple one ya'll are looking at, I filled the hole but it was still noticable.Second, he increased the LOP to 14 3/4"(from 14 1/2") when he installed the Pad; something I've always hated doing on a production rifle that comes without one..like the original stock on my NEF. I'm tall and thin with a long, but not thin, neck so most rifles are a bit short for me. That extra 1/4" increased the drop at the butt a bit, which I need, and also goes a long way to keeping the scope out of my face, since that 400 gr load I shoot has a fair amount of recoil. When you start out working with a quality product you do your best to maintain that standard in your own work. Living here in the mountains of Pennsylvania, where the "Kentucky Rifle"was born, just seems natural to carry a more modern( but not too modern) version of one into these old forests.
