Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats Manners inletting....

Yes, the McMillan Edge pillars are not what I was expecting on the last one I changed out to M5 and pillar bedded.

Regarding the lack of drop in on stocks....I'm happy to pillar bed it and sand high spots in a barrel channel or bolt handle inlet. Manner's inlets it for pillars but the inlet's height between action and bottom metal is off for M5. The bottom metal is a standard M5 short action inlet. There's no excuse for it not to be a drop in fit. To make an excuse for it is just making an excuse for poor work.

Don't misunderstand....I'm not making excuses for anything. But as my Dad would tell me; "We can wish in one hand, crap in the other, and see which fills up first."

I just accept the reality, is all. In the end, it's a better use of my time to finish any mfgs stock from a basic inlet, than it is to go back and rework someone else's idea of how they think it should be.

We have to rework so much CNC'd stuff at the race shop that maybe I'm a bit jaded. This new CNC'd titanium mount took me a lot of mill time to redo to fit the same companies 'chute hardware, for example. All the curved relieving was done a manual mill.





A couple weeks ago, I redid this laminated fully inletted stock. Believe me, it would have been much easier for me to just start at the start. I ended up laying in some carbon fiber cloth and a piece of carbon fiber rod...it came around nicely after that.

Action just out, pre clean up:



Dial indicator zero'd:



Max. of .001 barrel movement when the action screws are cracked loose:





For me, the ends justify the means....no matter what it takes to get there.

Good shootin' -Al

A buddy of mine ordered a manners for a left hand short action 700 with the all aluminum bedding block in it. When he received it it wouldn’t even come close to dropping in. He sent it back. When it was returned he could kinda get the barreled action to seat with a bunch of effort and tightening of action screws.

This was a full custom and accuracy was just not what he expected. He decided to try a chassis and sure enough accuracy improved by a huge margin (like 1.5 MOA to .5 MOA)

He was angry and told me he was tossing the stock in the dumpster. Me being the nice guy that I am talked home off the cliff and told him just to give me the stock😁.

I took it home and found that the bedding block was not even close to fitting a 700 action! I dremelled as much as I could out and then glass bedded it to my action. It has sense become my favorite and most consistent rifle.

Stock quality seems great but bedding is horrible!

Sample of one

Any openings in your locale to be your neighbor? 😀😀

If a MDT et al can make a chassis fit as good as they do with a cnc, there is no reason Manners can't inlet with similar precision.

It can get noisy......

Couldn't agree more. But that's not the reality.

I just don't understand the mindset of ordering a product known for not getting it right. And then being upset when it's not right. The consumer made the decision to accept what they send.

"You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality."
- Ayn Rand (1905-1982)

Season ends here Friday so I'll take time to look at it a bit more. Maybe the better route is to return it. You're correct, it's foolish to accept poor work. It would likely be less hassle for me to fix it myself, but in so doing, I'm supporting the practice of poor quality.

The problem with returning something for rework (besides the time)...is that it might come back still not right. And possibly needing more work after the 'fix' than what it needs right now.

Sometimes it's better to just cut our losses, fix it ourselves, swallow hard, and file it away in our memory bank for the future.

There's an aluminum bedding block stock here now that's kind of the same situation. They always need some work, either lapping or on the mill. But this one is truly nasty...the block is in there crooked, down in the front and down in the rear. As best I can tell from this lash up, the block itself is also twisted along it's length. It's advertised as a "6061 billet bedding block" which is a total marketing ploy meant to appeal to the 'bubble pack' consumer. It's actually a 6061 hardness piece of aluminum extrusion. Now that's not totally bad, in and of itself. But it's not milled from a single chunk of 6061T6 tooling stock, as is implied. I guess the hunk of extruded aluminum is how they market it as a "billet".

But a little set up time and a 1.375 ball end mill will turn the turd into ice cream. I sure hope the trigger guard doesn't need any filing...that would rattle me.

Best of luck with your project. If I can be of any assistance, let me know sir.

Good shootin' -Al

So, who's upset?

What I’m gathering from this thread is this. Al is explaining nothing is perfect and it’s very easy for him to make things close to perfect himself. Most of us don’t have that talent and skill.

What many of us are saying about Manners is we wish they were as close to drop in as a $150 B&C or Boyd’s.

TFF!

Thanks, Kaleb.

Honestly, I don't have any more talent or skill than anyone else. It's really just a matter of doing it. Yes, a mill and lathe make it 'easier', in a way. But not always. For quite a few years, I did inletting and pillar work on a drill press with a 5" compound vise bolted down to it. With the drill press quill tweaked to reduce the wander, it worked just fine. Still does. Then I got a import 7X12 mini lathe and making pillars, escutcheons, screws, etc. became a lot easier. Heck, I still use the mini lathe for a lot of things since it's right in my gun room.

The bottom line for me is that for less money spent on a stock that doesn't fit, a home tinkerer (like myself) can acquire all the tools needed to do the work himself. Thinking a project through and ending up with a good job is pretty rewarding for almost everyone, I think.

Good shootin' -Al

Yeah, don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining.

I have the skills to do it, but I don't do it every day and getting things to turn out like your pics is not easy.

Most will pay their smith to fix the problems on a $900+ stock or send it back, both adding more time and money to a project that could have and should have been right to start with.

This type of quality issues goes further than stocks as I’m sure everyone knows. There’s no excuse for it. I’m working my way through a [bleep] storm with Lane suppressors. It took a year to get it through the ATF only to find out there was, and still is, a significant defect in the design that causes the thing to leak at the joints of the assembly. I know where there are 8 of those suppressors and every one of them leak. If you think it’s a pain in the a$$ to deal with a bum stock, try sorting out the change in ownership of a NFA item. Months of time and many $$ wasted. Do yourself a favor and look elsewhere if your in the market for a suppressor.

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LOL, that’s not the worst one either.

No worries, sir. Sounds like your needs are being met and standards achieved.

Good shootin' and all the best. -Al

good thing there is snow on the ground or you could start a fire with that thing.