DIY RokStok in maple

[Mtnmilsurp]

For OP or anyone who knows, would a laminated piece of wood with alternating grain direction be more rigid and/or better? I'm certain it wouldn't be more attractive...

I have no experience with laminate but expect it would be more of a challenge to inlet precisely by hand. You’d constantly be running into glue and differing wood grain and density, no?

 

[Macintosh]

For OP or anyone who knows, would a laminated piece of wood with alternating grain direction be more rigid and/or better? I'm certain it wouldn't be more attractive...

More rigid, maybe a little, but not enough to matter.
Laminate will change less dimensionally compared to some wood…but a good air-dried eu walnut blank that is well sealed changes very little dimensionally. Probably not enough to matter for 99.9% of the people out there.
Strength…perhaps significant depending on the shape of the stock. The reason you dont see a lot of vertical-grip wood stocks is that its much, much harder to lay out the stock on a wood blank so the grain doesnt cross the wrist, which creates a major (and potentially catastrophic) weak point. For a VG stock a laminate of some sort might be a better choice for this reason. I believe the wood rockstock that will be commercially available is done as a sort of laminate—not lots of thin layers, but a inner layer with the two nice-looking slabs of wood on the outside. I highly suspect this is simply due to the grain runout in the wrist. Ive been toying with a build like this and would certainly be picky about the blank and might also set a couple pieces of threaded rod or a good-sized dowel in the wrist to avoid this issue.
“Better” is very subjective. Laminate is closer to a synthetic…ie lower maintenence, lower initial cost, etc. But laminate is generally heavier, may be harder to work on with hand tools, and short of a specialty layup like above doesn't look nearly as good. Depends on what you are after.

 

[Mtnmilsurp]

After 7 months of carrying and shooting my Mauser in this stock it’s time to make some modifications. I quickly found that this stock (as completed in May) was a dream to shoot but a pig to carry.

After much cogitating on whether the increased shootability was worth the poor carrying ergonomics I finally had an epiphany that the essential elements of the RokStok concept weren’t to blame, rather the unnecessary point I had left in the front of the comb. That thing jabbed me in the wrist more times than I can count. So I fired up the bench sander and eliminated it. What a difference! Now it shoots like a benchrest and carries like a sporter.

It’s no coincidence that it looks more like the real-deal UM/Stockys version now. The extensive prototyping those guys did probably eliminated many subtle but fatal flaws than most customers will never notice. I suspect the knockoffs will be full of them.

Here’s a photo showing the wood I removed. If I could put some wood back on it would be behind the tang above the wrist.

 

[TheM1DoesMyTalking]

That looks like an improvement. I love that its a living project that you can make better as you go. Still, was it painful to cut into the finished wood? What's your plan for refinishing?

 

[Mtnmilsurp]

That looks like an improvement. I love that its a living project that you can make better as you go. Still, was it painful to cut into the finished wood? What's your plan for refinishing?

Didn’t give it a second thought! Here’s how far 5 minutes with some aquafortis, heat gun, and tru -oil got me. 5 more rounds of tru-oil and you’ll never know the difference. Tru-oil finishes are highly repairable.

 

[TheM1DoesMyTalking]

That's so cool! What does the stock weigh now? I looked back and saw that it used to weigh 35 oz.

 

[Mtnmilsurp]

I removed less than a cubic inch so it’s not even an ounce lighter.

 

[TheM1DoesMyTalking]

That's still really impressive that it's only a couple of ounces more than a carbon fiber Rokstok!

 

[Ecampbell25]

Wow that’s beautiful! Awesome work!