Making a Trap Stock for a Remington 870

[TomG]

My has been taking an interest in trap shooting over the last couple of years but has been struggling because she has been borrowing guns that don't fit her very well (a common issue for women). This summer, we happened upon a 70's vintage Remington 870 for the right price, at an antique show of all places, and I bought it for her with the promise to get her measured for a proper trap stock and then make her one that would fit her perfectly. It was an ideal gun for her with a shorter 28" barrel, a modified choke and since it was an older, 1970's vintage, it was polished and blued, so it will make a nice looking trap gun. We had her shoot a try gun a few times this summer and worked out the best dimensions of the stock. The whole idea of fitting a trap gun is to make it shoot where you are looking with both eyes open without having to struggle to get your eye lined up on the bird. With all of the dimensions we came up with in hand and the wife out of town, I started off making the stock. I can't let Greg have all the fun working with wood.

The chunk of wood is a piece of fiddleback American walnut that I bought from a guy out in Washington (state). I've seen a lot of fiddleback, or curly maple, but walnut with this type of figure is sort of unusual. This particular piece came from a 7 foot diameter tree out in California. He sold me enough of the same pattern to make both the buttstock and the forestock.

The first task was to make a template from the measurements we took from the try gun. They were the length of pull which is the distance from the trigger to the center of the butt, the drop at the comb which is the distance from the top of the rib to the top of the cheek piece the drop at the heel which is the distance form the top of the rib to the top of the butt stock and the pitch which determines the angle of the buttstock against the shoulder. Whew! This will be a Monte Carlo stock, meaning that the comb is raised and parallel to the rib of the barrel. This reduces cheek slap from the recoil that you get with the angled comb on a field stock, a huge deal when you are taking 25 shots in a round of trap.





Next I rough sawed the shape and thickness leaving plenty of the pricey walnut to whittle away at.



Drilling the through hole for the mounting bolt took some thought, but I came up with the idea of locating and center drilling the hole location on the stock and using the lathe to drill it in from each end. Luckily, the two holes lined up perfectly in the middle.



My wife had her gun with her so I had to use one of mine as a pattern for the inletting. It was a fairly simple job on the mill using a tapered end mill and some freehand arcs (it's just wood).





Now that she's back in town I can start in on the final shaping using her gun as a guide. I'll post some more pics as the project progresses. The plan is to have it finished before our next trip up North at the end of the month. Hopefully she won't show me up once she has a properly fitted gun.

Tom