A couple of weeks ago, Whitey asked me if I would have any use for a stock for a large ring Mauser. It looked like a very nice stock, so I said yes and promised to begin work on putting a barreled action in it upon arrival. We agreed on the barrel ed action to put in the stock, awhile back I bought someones unfinished project, a VZ-24 action, with a 6.5x55 barrel and opposing triggers. The front one takes the slack out, the metal needs a fair bit of work. Ive kept a journal of progress. Rather than give you the day-by-day progress, I will summarize highlights from the first couple weeks of work and try to update things after significant changes. If you want, send me a PM and I will send you a pdf file with the daily progress. Please understand that progress will be slow. Much of the work is done after the kids have been put to bed. Whitey likes to see what people are working on and we hope that others might add to this thread or create similar threads.
Here is what we are starting with:
These pictures show the stock and action. I like the cheekpiece of the stock, and it does have a Winchester style steel buttplate. It looks very much like a Paul Jaeger stock, but there are no initials carved behind the buttplate.
Week 1. I inletted the trigger guard and action into the stock, put the triggers back on and inletted those. I replaced the white line spacers with black line spacers and began reshaping the trigger guard and polishing the floorplate.
Week 2 to 2.5. Whitey and I discussed putting in a hinged floorplate with a lever release. I had done this before and made a holder to help with that. But I was not happy with my first effort and spent a lot of time designing things, making file guides and correcting flaws in my holder. But in the end, I was pretty happy with things, here are pictures of the milling of the slot for the hinge and the drilling hinge pin.
And what the more or less finished product looks like
Once the hinge was made and soldered to the floorplate and a lever was made, I put it back on the stock and inletted the area underneath the hinge so that the hinge can rotate.
I glued on a Lyman 48 and a front sight to check if the sight combination is feasible. It looks good. I get a nice sight picture when I put the rifle to my shoulder.