Firstly, keep in mind I’m fairly new to all this shooting business so I may be away off with this and missing a heap of stuff.
A stock is mostly just a cradle to hold a barreled action and trigger mechanism. What it looks like it’s largely irrelevant assuming it can be held steady and comfortably.
The Norinco JW25A is really just a JW15 barreled action in a historically accurate stock.
So, with that in mind, could a company make and sell timber stocks that turn a certain barreled action into a replica historical firearm?
For example, you buy a JW15 and a new SMLE stock designed to fit it, throw the barreled action into to the stock and boom, you’ve got a 22lr SMLE replica. Obviously it’s not going to be a perfect replica, but it’s a cool looking 22.
I have no intention to do this, god knows it’s out of my league, but I’d be interested if it was done.
You’ll find the smle stock ’ fit ’ actually is quite complex, bit of an old world skill not many people can do properly these days, the relation of wood to action and how it all interacts with the shooter is a bit of an art for accuracy, in my opinion
But give it a crack maybe go for another combo though, try making a modern carcano, those seem to just be a metal tube screwed to a log
All that matters is the inletting. You can make the stock look like an umbrella if you want. Assuming the Inletting is done correctly you can make the stock any shape you want, including Milsurps. America has a few , like M1 carbine stocks for 10/22 etc.
No reason it couldn’t be done.
Possibly cost prohibitive to.use actual walnut
Cost, too many different actions, limited market appeal. Expensive tooling. You would need to make prototypes. The actual difficult part would be sourcing or making the various stock hardware. Bands, nose caps , sling swivels etc. All that adds a lot of development costs. Or make them out of polymer and the people who would actually want a Milsurp stock will bitch that it’s plastic. Then people will bitch it’s not historically accurate enough. Then the price balloons to the cost of an actual Milsurp. Now you have a $450 stock with plastic bits that no one wants. Or an $800 stock with metal bits that no one will buy.
Not to mention a donor rifle first. So now your plinker has $1300 invested. And it’s weird and not even real.
Can buy a really nice real one for that.
Have I crushed your dreams yet?
Edit: And… To accommodate a variety of barrelled actions you would probably have to compromise on stock hardware to a one size fits all, kind of looks like a K98 but it’s weird.
Or add more expense with custom stock hardware for each action.
Or limit sales and perfect it for one type of action.
I can only imagine its a massive effort. Diana airguns made a Kar98k style air rifle, Im assuming it was not an easy task. Sounds like a heck of a lot of work.
In fact, it sounds like the kind of business you’d set up in thw USA close to the mexican border. Those hombres got skills man, and for less $15 an hour! You seen that mehican guy do all those custom interiors on WestCoast Customs? Ayyy pepeee!
I agree with what people have said about the complexities created by having to accommodate different actions. I still think this would be an interesting business proposition for someone like Norinco who have the benefit of mass production and the savings that it brings.