ok , purchased the rifle in '93 , SS version , came with the drab birch stock , i believe they call it a gen 3 rifle , recently it developed a crack at the wrist about 3 inches ,havnt had allot of luck in the past with wrist repairs so i started the search for a new stock
found a sound squirrel from a gen 1 , finish was not good , but the lumber was not beat or cracked , the only damage was a hole where it appears a sling stud had been ripped out ,I'm on day 3 of work on it , i took my time removing the finish around the ornate reliefs , decided not to touch the fancy bits at all , not even to knock down the gloss finish ,stained and poly'd and turned out great
now i should have held off with the finish , that was a doubt moment because i forgot there was some fitting to be done to fit the gen 3 into a gen 1 stock , to my defense i thought it was just going to be the mag release, never dawned on me the whole trigger guard group was different
the gen 3 trigger guard stays the same width where the gen 1 is longer and tapers thinner towards the heel of the stock , so first using a high end 1/4 German chisel i used it as a gouge to slowly remove the wood to the scribed outline of the wider trigger guard , once i had the outside dimensions which was the critical part as its the finished part all i had to do is remove the material inside allowing the trigger guard to drop in
now the problem , i had a hole where the longer gen 1 trigger guard would be , about 3/4 of an inch past the gen 3 trigger guard ends , first i tried famwood stainable filler , nope , dug it out ,was not durable , tried stainable plastic wood , nope ,not durable enough , dug it out then i sat on it and i had a tube of 2 part epoxy putty , if you are not familiar this stuff has amazing adhesion properties , and cures like stone , only draw back is it does not stain well , figured well , im going with strength and durability first , then i will deal with aesthetics
so this morning i final fit the trigger guard , and knocked down and sanded the repair and dapped a coat of stain on top , pretty sure i can blend it in and the poly will seal the stain , maybe by the end of the day