If you really mess up on a stock, you can always use spray on truck bed liner to hide your sins. I recently bought a Browning A-bolt that a guy had dropped out of a tree. Needless to say, the stock was smashed. I used Brownells bedding compound to repair the stock, filling in all the missing bits with the glass reinforced epoxy. It looked like Frankenstein. I went to the local Auto Zone and bought a small can of spray on Herculiner for $7 and sprayed it. It looked like a synthetic stock, but without that annoying plastic hollow sound, and it was much grippier. I loved the stock and hated the rifle, so I sold it. Nothing looks as good on a rifle as a nice wood stock, but if you wind up with a butt ugly piece of wood, this way you can at least use it. Hope this helps!