![]() The custom walnut stock is extremely labor-intensive, and the highly figured walnut, which was much more common a century ago, has become a rarity. Those stocks-even the blanks from which they are made-are not cheap. And I firmly believe that, like a fine watch, everyone should own at least one gun with a stock they are truly proud of. ![]() Names like Ralf Martini, Todd Ramirez, D’Arcy Echols, Mark Renmant and JJ Perodeau, just to name a few, can make the stock of your dreams. Custom stocks are a work of art, and to watch a classically trained stockmaker hand-carve a stock is like watching Michelangelo work. While the mass-produced stocks are created by machinery, the higher-end walnut stocks are finished by hand. The Winchester Model 70 maintains a walnut stock advantage, as does the lineup of Winchester lever-action rifles, but synthetic-stocked lever-actions are popping up regularly these days Marlin and Henry being two examples which come quickly to mind.Ī well-sealed walnut stock will actually stand up well to most hunting situations, though they aren’t as rigid or easy to produce as a synthetic stock. The vast majority of Ruger, Remington and Savage rifles and shotguns are stocked in something other than walnut. Taking a look at some of the most popular firearms companies, I was honestly a bit shocked to see how the synthetic/polymer/laminate wood stocks have come to dominate the market. When combined with stainless steel or some of the other more impervious metal finishes, these stocks were a big part of the weatherproof equation that hunters who spend their time in salty sea air or those areas with heavy rainfall would come appreciate. These relatively modern developments (they became popular in the 1950s in firearms like the Remington Nylon 66) proved to be nearly impervious to weather, resisting the influence of heat and humidity on the firearm’s performance. But I digress.If you’ve spent any amount of time shopping for a new firearm, I’m sure you’ve noticed that there are as many-and quite often more-choices of polymer, fiberglass or synthetic stocks as there are wood. If you could hurl with style you had nothing to worry about. There was a lot of random puking back then, since we didn’t have to burden our minds with safe spaces and trigger words and micro-aggressions. My only concern for its welfare was that someone would puke on it. Because the steel bolt rode in a nylon receiver, you never even had to oil it. I took one to college with me, shot it for four years with any kind of cheap ammo I could find, never cleaned it, and used it in temperatures as cold as 30 below. It fed, reliably, from a 14-round tubular magazine in the stock, had a good trigger, excellent open sights, shot accurately, and made the AK-47 look unreliable by comparison. Remington did everything right on the 66. There was nothing like it then, and there isn’t today. 22LR semiauto that was made from 1959 to 1989, weighed only 4 pounds, and was one of the first rifles to have a synthetic stock. The firearm I recommended was the Remington Nylon 66, a. ![]() A couple of years ago I would have told him to get a life, not a gun, but now I think it’s a perfectly reasonable request. One of the recent “Ask Petzal” questions I received asked me to recommend an indestructible.
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