Taking stock: utility, tradition or beauty?

With more choice than ever when it comes to stocks, Graham Downing asks whether plastic, wood or laminate is best for a long day in the field

- Graham Downing

Fifty years ago, there was no serious discussion about what makes the best rifle stock. There was standard wood for standard-quality rifles and fancy wood for fancy rifles. That’s all changed of course, and today’s rifle shooter can benefit from a much wider choice of materials, from a classic wooden stock through a range of laminates to injection-moulded thermoplastics and even epoxy-bound composite stocks. All have their advantages and disadvantages, but before considering these, it’s worth thinking about exactly what a rifle stock has to do.

Primarily, it provides a means of bringing the barrel and action to eye level and supporting it firmly, comfortably and securely in order that the rifle may be sighted at a target. Secondly, it provides a means of transferring and distributing the recoil comfortably to the shooter’s shoulder. To ensure that it performs both these functions, there must be a perfect, or at the very least a near-perfect, fit between the action and the stock, while in most conventional bolt-action rifles the barrel must be allowed to ‘free-float’ within the fore-end.

This is because a rifled barrel flexes when it is fired, in equal and opposite response to the bullet that is spinning inside it. If any part of the fore-end is in contact with the barrel when a shot is taken, this can interfere with the harmonics of the barrel and will potentially affect accuracy. That’s why it should always be possible to pass a slip of paper between the fore-end and the barrel of your rifle.

Soft spot