Weatherby Vanguard Carbon Stock Build

[nighthawkf-117]

Hi everyone,

Inspired by other builds on this forum, I'm building a carbon fiber stock for my 308 Weatherby Vanguard. I recently put together a full custom rifle with an AG Composites Alpine Hunter stock. I'm amazed with how much I like this stock compared to the traditional style stock on my Vanguard. I also feel I am having issues with the barrel not being free floated on that rifle. Lastly I'll be designing this stock with a negative comb above bore butt stock. I hope to dramatically improve the shootablility of this rifle with these changes.

For those curious I have pretty extensive composites experience. I am currently building a set of molds for a Kevlar canoe which ultimately be vacuum infused. It has taken me many years and many failures to get to this quality of work.

I started with 1/2" divinycell foam. While expensive I feel this foam is the only option for the quality I want to achieve. Insulation foam board sucks!! I laminated 4 layers of foam together to get to 2" thick. The center part has 4oz unidirectional carbon fiber epoxied together and the two outer parts have 0.75oz fiberglass. This was clamped between two boards and flatness checked with a straight edge. After a full day of curing the block was unclamped and the rough shape of the stock cut out on a bandsaw.

Next will be shaping the shoulder pad area, grip, and foreend. Then blending.

 

[Wapiti1]

Very cool. Curious how you fill the action inlet and get a good bond to the shell.

Jeremy

 

[nighthawkf-117]

More progress over the last several days. I roughly sketched the inset and barrel channel on the foam blank and shaped it with a knife and 60 grit sandpaper. I thought I had a picture of the final shaped foam. But I guess you will see it when its out of the vacuum bag!

Once shaped I CA glued some stainless steel tee nuts in 10-32 thread for my sling stud mounts, bi-pod attachment, and butt pad attachment. I then coated the threads heavily with a paste wax then packed them with synthetic modeling clay. This will allow me to "dig" out the threads once the carbon is layed up over them.

The foam will be laminated in 3 steps. Step 1 will be the initial layer of carbon over the foam. This will consist of 1 ply of unidirectional 4.0oz CF, and 1 ply of 6oz crowfoot weave CF. Step two will be sanding this initial layer smooth and laminating one final ply of 5.7oz twill CF. Step 3 will involve inletting the foam and laminating carbon there to provide a good bond between the shell, foam, and eventual action bedding.

I prepared all of my carbon and vacuum bagging equipment. Then the above mention 4.0oz unidirectional CF was laminated with epoxy, followed by the 6oz crowfoot CF. This was then wrapped in peel ply and some electrical tape used to hold carbon and peel ply in place prior to vacuum bagging. The whole stock was then strategically wrapped in paper towel (I use this for my breather/bleeder). This assembly was then sealed in a vacuum bag and put under vacuum. Vacuum done in several cycles to work the bag around the complex geometry of the stock. I wasn't able to get any pictures of this as I was working with wet hands and under a time clock. The stock is now curing and ill check in tomorrow once its out of the bag and peel ply removed.

 

[nighthawkf-117]

More progress. The first layup had some shift of the carbon causing some wrinkling. I think the electrical tape used to hold peel ply and carbon in place caused this. I decided to sand these out and do another layer of the 6oz carbon over the whole thing. This time I cut the carbon in smaller sections and aligned the weave to better contour around the complex shapes. I also left out the electrical tape. This worked much better.

Next step will be sanding the minor imperfections out. Then the final layer of carbon will be applied. I think I'm going to do the final piece in two layups. These will be split along the length of the stock (hot dog way). Im hoping this will let the vacuum bag pull the carbon down better. Because of the shape of the stock the bag creases, which means that small area isn't getting a ton of vacuum. This will make more sense hopefully when I'm onto that step.

Sorry the pictures are a bit out of order! I don't know how to fix that.

 

[Mojave]

that is awesome. Thank you for sharing that.