Still waiting for the last barrel so I worked on the fore ends. I used cyanoacrylate to attach the horn. The second image shows the dowel detail that I turned on each of the blanks. Probably should have been longer but didn't want to run out of horn on the bottom. I shameless plan to copy the Hoffman so know what the final is going to look like.
For the sharp observers that noticed four fore ends that is because I'm finishing a Cadet in parallel with this project. It is going to be a 5.6x50R and the full octagon barrel got cut last year on a friends horizontal mill. Have a Zeiss Zieleins that has some kind of front attachment not unlike the Litscherts and appears to be about a 6x. I removed a AKAH ring/base set from a Hensoldt Klein Dialyt and that will attach to a rib on the barrel.
I just got two new finger planes and they are quite handy for shaping. One is a standard block plane type affair in miniature and the other is a scraper. Controlled material removal and the shortness allows wonderful curves to be applied to surfaces. They are shown between the fore ends.
