For anyone else interested in doing a semi close M40 clone, here's the stock I just sourced. I had approached Boyd's gunstocks in March of this year to see if they could make a plain walnut stock for a heavy barrel 700 and they said they could. In a few weeks they told me it's now available so I ordered one.
Now, normally I'm a purist for certain projects but for this, the scope was already going to be different (I went old school steel weaver t-10 refurbished with mil dot reticle & nitrogen fill for this build) so I thought what the heck, close enough is ok for me for this project.
I totally understand all the differences between this stock and the real deal, but I'm not paying 500-900 for a wood stock, sorry. In my opinion no wood stocks worth over 300 dollars. I can get an HS Precision for 269 and be much better off. Amongst the obvious differences are the finish (this one came much nicer than the factory M40, but they come unfinished as well), the two black dots on the side, (I'm assuming they're crossbolts for strength?) the nicer buttpad, slightly different pistol grip geometry, and the comb's pointed at a slight downwards angle whereas the real deal is more parallel to the ground.
Though for 187 (that's with the slightly thinner buttpad) this is a decent substitute made out of super nice walnut. This is drop in ready, not "95%" (which equals to roughly 80% in the real world, that's been my luck in the past with stocks) The barrel channel is the standard issue civilian heavy barrel 700 that you see being sold today. You would need to enlarge it if you're running a true heavy barrel like the M24. (this comes with sling swivels installed but I took them out to throw more stain on this)
For a good enough old school M40 style rifle this will do good enough in my opinion. If you sourced a truly old school buttplate in the past I suppose you could get this stock for a tad cheaper if you told them you don't want it with any pad. Getting it unfinished is I think 10 dollars more because of the labor involved in "taking it off of the line" before finishing. In retrospect I should have gotten this unfinished because I have my own way of finishing wood.
All in all I'm pretty happy.
Now, normally I'm a purist for certain projects but for this, the scope was already going to be different (I went old school steel weaver t-10 refurbished with mil dot reticle & nitrogen fill for this build) so I thought what the heck, close enough is ok for me for this project.
I totally understand all the differences between this stock and the real deal, but I'm not paying 500-900 for a wood stock, sorry. In my opinion no wood stocks worth over 300 dollars. I can get an HS Precision for 269 and be much better off. Amongst the obvious differences are the finish (this one came much nicer than the factory M40, but they come unfinished as well), the two black dots on the side, (I'm assuming they're crossbolts for strength?) the nicer buttpad, slightly different pistol grip geometry, and the comb's pointed at a slight downwards angle whereas the real deal is more parallel to the ground.
Though for 187 (that's with the slightly thinner buttpad) this is a decent substitute made out of super nice walnut. This is drop in ready, not "95%" (which equals to roughly 80% in the real world, that's been my luck in the past with stocks) The barrel channel is the standard issue civilian heavy barrel 700 that you see being sold today. You would need to enlarge it if you're running a true heavy barrel like the M24. (this comes with sling swivels installed but I took them out to throw more stain on this)
For a good enough old school M40 style rifle this will do good enough in my opinion. If you sourced a truly old school buttplate in the past I suppose you could get this stock for a tad cheaper if you told them you don't want it with any pad. Getting it unfinished is I think 10 dollars more because of the labor involved in "taking it off of the line" before finishing. In retrospect I should have gotten this unfinished because I have my own way of finishing wood.
All in all I'm pretty happy.
Attachments
Last edited:
