doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Winchester M 70 Stock Question

I am refinishing a stock from a Win M 70 (.270 cal). It's a great piece of wood and I need to get this right. There are two borings out of the back end of the stock about .850" in diameter and they converge about 3 1/2" from the end of the wood (I assume for correct balance or weight reduction?) I need to plug one of the holes to enable me to install a recoil pad correctly; would use the base of that plug to install the top screw for the recoil pad. (Otherwise, the pad would sit too high on the back end of the stock and I would have to grind off the the strongest part of the pad for the installation. ( It is one of the nice Winchester repro red pads and the customer paid about $70 for it.) Would doing the pad this way be detrimental to the value of the gun? Thanks! Gil

Not to me. If I installed such a plug, I would try to use a similar piece of wood and I would certainly orient the grain in the same way so that any seasonal expansion and contraction are the same for both the stock and the plug to prevent cracking.