Cricket Picture Thread !!
i am actually surprised that there isnt a picture thread yet because i love seeing your guns and what you have done to them.
post some good pics of your guns! i will have some as soon as i get home! 😀
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You might try Hoppe’s Synthetic Stock Rejuvenator to give it some bling.
Hey Larry, I hadn’t heard of the Hoppe’s stuff. I’m going to look into that.
I shot it quite a bit today. I liked the feel of the stock. It is just a heavy rifle, no way around it. I hope to get it finish sanded/steel wooled this week and sprayed down with something before the weekend… more stuff to kill Saturday!
SWS, looks like it turned out really well. I had the Cricket with the synthetic stock and it was just too heavy and bulky for me. I relieved some of the weight by easily removing the magazine holder.
You might try Hoppe’s Synthetic Stock Rejuvenator to give it some bling.
Call me crazy but you could actually make your own stock pretty easily if your feeling creative..
If you made a straight cut across the top of the stock your working on now, and attach that to the stock you make.. That would eliminate the hard part of making a stock- the inletting. LOL
Just cut the inlet section off and you could screw that to whatever you create. Hillbilly DIY
Not that is some redneck ingenuity right there! Only my intention from the beginning is just to lighten this dang chunk of rubber or plastic up as much as i could to make it easier to carry around in the woods with me… I am not a craftsman by any means… I R En-ga-neer… couldn’t spell it last week, now I R 1… But my passion is shooting and hunting. Maybe when I get too old or bored, I might try to make a complete stock. I’ve done it for PB’s before, but it was out of the need for a small stock to fit my kids when they were little, not because I particularly enjoyed doing that sort of stuff…
Actually, I like your bondo ideas. IF I ever decide to really customize a stock, that’s likely what I’d do, just fill the voids and grind away what I don’t want. Heck, they get some coating or finish applied that would cover up the different colors anyway.
Thanks again for your input.
Hey salt..
Call me crazy but you could actually make your own stock pretty easily if your feeling creative..
If you made a straight cut across the top of the stock your working on now, and attach that to the stock you make.. That would eliminate the hard part of making a stock- the inletting. LOL
Just cut the inlet section off and you could screw that to whatever you create. Hillbilly DIY
Idk if that would save any weight either though. It’s looking good now either way. When your done you should weigh it for comparison to stock.
How do you know those areas of the stock are hollow? Can you see they are from looking into the stock inletting? If that’s the case, you could carefully pour some Bondo down into them to fill the voids.. After that sets up, you could go to town on reshaping those areas! And I wouldn’t cut down the sides of the stock.. I think it looks better with the airtube enclosed. That’s my opinion.
Here’s a look from the top down into the stocks… I thought about bondo and even dying it black, but then my original reason for doing this was to minimize the weight… didn’t want to add weight just so I could grind it off again…
And I decided not to take off the upper part of the fore end for the same reason you posted… If I did anything, I’d fill the lower part of the fore end with bondo and then take off most of the lower half of the fore end, but decided against that for the same reason as above…
Thanks for the feedback guys! I’ll post up the finished product after I play with it a bit.
Saltwater,
How do you know those areas of the stock are hollow? Can you see they are from looking into the stock inletting? If that’s the case, you could carefully pour some Bondo down into them to fill the voids.. After that sets up, you could go to town on reshaping those areas! And I wouldn’t cut down the sides of the stock.. I think it looks better with the airtube enclosed. That’s my opinion.
I’m not sure of the weight of Bondo. I know there has to be some product similar to Bondo that’s very light-weight. I don’t know. You’ll have to guess if adding the weight of Bondo to fill those hollow areas would allow you to take off more weight from the stock itself.
In my opinion, you may even be able to cut off the thin piece that connects the bottom of the grip to the rear of the stock. Make it look more “Matador-ish.” I don’t think you’d have to worry about the stock being weakened.. It should still be strong enough to hold up fine.
The fore end is hollow. I took probably 1/2″ off the front of it and I’d estimate half the weight reduction came from removing the fat sides of the fore end. I thought about cutting it down from the top so that it did not enclose the air tube, but so far haven’t been brave enough to try that.
Regarding the bar between the pistol grip and back of the shoulder stock, I actually looked at that carefully and may at some point do that. Structurally, I think it could handle that other than the fact that the pistol grip is hollow also and I did take off quite a bit of material from it which may render it weak where the grip joins at the top… still thinking about that. If I did that, then I’m pretty sure I’d be getting close to the skeleton wood stock weight… We’ll see.
I’m gonna play with it this weekend before applying a final sanding and finish coating…
I’d love to have rounded that off exactly like you suggest, but the inside of the stock behind where the magazine holder was is hollow. I rounded the edges as much as I dared.
Heck, you could also round out the forend more as well.. It looks extra beefy at the moment. I bet you could lose noticeable weight if you skinny it up by taking the corners clean off.
In my opinion, you may even be able to cut off the thin piece that connects the bottom of the grip to the rear of the stock. Make it look more “Matador-ish.” I don’t think you’d have to worry about the stock being weakened.. It should still be strong enough to hold up fine.
You have smoothed out and rounded off everthing but the back piece of the mag holder! Just a suggestion but I wonder what it would look like if you rounded that out kind of like an edgun except with the bottom bar. You would lose more oz and it would be comfortable as a stablizing groove.
I kind of like the sanded look maybe use a finer grit sandpaper.
It gives it an industrial look I think ,,,,,,,, ,,, , a military tank tuff look, if it gets a scratch you can just sand it out.
It must have a good grip feel to it as well !
That plastic can be somewhat unstable and unpredictable when removing at that stage.
I would be very careful from now.
In any case, NICE WORK MAN !
~ GKU
The base plastic does have pores in it that resulted from air/gas bubbles in the plastic during the pour/moulding process. I did the initial sanding with 100 grit, then 150 grit and last night finished off with 220 grit. I think one round with 000 steel wool and it will be as good as it’s going to get. Will post up the finished gun when I’m done tinkering with fit/finish… And thanks for the kind words… Both thumbs are sore from the sanding! THAT’s the main reason for the long breaks between mod sessions! :smilen:
I kind of like the sanded look maybe use a finer grit sandpaper.
It gives it an industrial look I think ,,,,,,,, ,,, , a military tank tuff look, if it gets a scratch you can just sand it out.
It must have a good grip feel to it as well !
That plastic can be somewhat unstable and unpredictable when removing at that stage.
I would be very careful from now.
In any case, NICE WORK MAN !
~ GKU
Modified version is 0.8 pound lighter !
That’s about half the weight of a good scope.
It’s always nice to get some weight off of any gun, as I get older everything is heavy.
How much did it weight before the mod or did I miss something in your earlier posts (aged related also) ?
Thanks ~ GKU
Heck, I didn’t even post original weight, but it was 3.10 pounds. Got it down to 2.33 pounds. Last night I whittled a little more on it… took out the vertical piece between magazine holder pocket and gap behind the grip and took off quite a bit of thickness along the sides as well as the grip. It is now a full pound lighter at 2.10. I thought I was getting close to a wood skeleton stock, but alas was very disappointed this morning when I weighed it then weighed my skeleton wood stock… It is only 1.47 pounds!!! Ain’t gonna get anywhere close to that! I’m done whittling/grinding on it. Over the weekend I’ll install it, shoot it to get the feel, then finish sand and coat it with something. I’m thinking about some of that spray in bed liner stuff. I also have some spray undercoating and spray plasti-dip. I figured the bed liner material would be the toughest. Unfinished it is a dull gray and not really black. It had some kind of rubbery texture on it from the factory. Once that was removed, it was no longer really black. I washed it down with soap and water last night thinking it would clean up and have a black color, but it did not. Here’s a pic of how it looks now.
Besides the finish coating, the only other thing I plan to do is add a rail to the bottom fore end for my Atlas Bipod and maybe a sling stud in the rear bottom of the stock. Got single point rail clamps ordered. Will try that for fit and function first. If that works, then no sling studs…
Hi SaltwaterSlick/Charlie,
Modified version is 0.8 pound lighter !
That’s about half the weight of a good scope.
It’s always nice to get some weight off of any gun, as I get older everything is heavy.
How much did it weight before the mod or did I miss something in your earlier posts (aged related also) ?
Thanks ~ GKU
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All this talk and work about a light stock got me to thinking about Dave,
He worked in Carbon Fiber, I could take a 5 LB pipe hanger (motorcycle) Give it to him and in a few weeks he would hand me back a one lb carbon fiber pipe hanger, Dave is long gone but I still run a lot of his one off Carbon fiber parts on my Bikes,,,,
Just got me to thinking out loud,
A Carbon fiber stock cricket would be way cool. Super strong , Super light,
Mike