Light weight Straight Stock 10/22 Project Part I

January 11, 2009

One of my favorite rifles is the Ruger 10/22.  I have a number of them and they are fun to shoot. I am not however one ot those who am willing to spend hundreds to make it into something it is not.  On the other hand I do like to tinker with them on occasion.

I had one of my 10/22s  out the other day and was showing it to my wife and 18 year old daughter who was home from college for the weekend.  One thing I noticed is that women are retarded when in comes to holding firearms.  The other thing (and possibly the reason they have problems) is that the length of the stock from the butt to the trigger was too long for them.  I’ve noticed this on previous occasions and it struck me that I could fix the problem with a saw and a plan (although I have fixed other things with a hammer and an expletive).

The plan was to cut the stock down to fit women and children. I have often thought that a straight stock 10/22 would make a handy little carbine. A straight stock allows one to adjust the length of trigger pull by sliding one’s grip hand up or back on the stock. This is similar to choking up on a baseball bat.

With that in mind I started digging around for one of my spare stocks.  These were all take offs that people sold on Ebay.  I found a  birch wood stock with a couple ding and nicks in it.  A couple minutes with a saw and I have the following.  .

The blue painters tape is mark my cuts and also prevent more dents and dings to the stock.

I then took a belt sander and clamped it to my work bench.  The stock  was held against it and shaped to my general plan.  With that completed I now have  a lot of hand sanding to do to smooth out the bumps.

You can see how much thinner the grip is…

And how much shorter. I still want to thin out that fore stock and make it more tapered to the end.

You can see that with the shortened stock the whole rifles is only 3-4″ longer than the original stock.  I think the bottom of the fore stock is still too chunky looking so I will be thinning it out.  There are also some ridges and bumps and stuff I am going to have to work on.

Come back soon as I update this project and show the completed rifle! Cheers!

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Ok, I am back. I decided that the stock looked too chunky and decided that it needed a trim. I always liked the english style straight grip and the schnauble type fore stock.  Took the stock to the sander to see what I could come up with.

That black mark at the end of the stock is the point of no return. Didn’t want to go past that point with the sander.

Nice and trim now.

Compare the before thinning and after thinning pics.

Before

After

Lots more sanding and some shaping to do. Haven’t decided what to do about the finish on the stock.

This is a work in progress so stay tuned.

Posted in Do-it-yourself