This project started as, well, a huge slab of a nice fiddleback maple. It spent several Arizona summers in my garage and got bone dry, and finally I decided it’s time to make something out of it. Hmm, what should I make? Tough choice…

After the stock was initially profiled and inletted, the hard work began. Unfortunately I haven’t documented the process, but essentially it was nothing but long hours of filing, scraping, sanding, drilling and molesting the wood in every other way. In parallel, I obtained a donor Remington 700 short action, made a custom barrel in 6.5 Creedmoor, installed the Sako extractor on the bolt, replaced the bottom metal and tuned the trigger. One final touch was making a custom bolt handle from a piece of walnut.

It was a fun project, and I’ve learned a lot about rifle gunsmitting in the process.