Lets talk aesthetics in restocking
 

Bet this could have been a nice 16-gauge Remington BE-Grade.

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I kind of like what they were TRYING to do. From the standpoint of custom stock styling. But, it clearly got away from them. Badly.

Even if it were done correctly, I still wouldnt like it on that gun. I do not like too much departure from what was originally put on a gun.

I once passed on a wonderful DEO-Grade Remington 12-gauge, that had a high quality restock, but in the outrageous style of Leonard Mews from back in the 1960s vintage Gun Digests. Don't know if it was Mews' work or not and the guy selling the gun didn't have a clue.

I don't have any pictures of any of them, but a local hereabouts named Curly Lewis reveled in restocking guns in Birdseye maple about 30-40 years ago. His trademark stock affectations were dart-shaped Monte Carlo cheekpieces with the sharp tine at the nose of the comb and the wide "paddle" end just forward of the buttplate. He put stocks that were nearly identical geometrically on both trap and skeet guns, mostly Model 12s, Remington 870s and 1100s, and the occasionally the very unlucky Browning Superposed. One of the senior skeet weasels at our long-gone local club had Curly restock a set of Remington 1100s in all 4 gauges for him. They were scary guns and hard to look at. Mercifully, they were stolen a few years later from the owner's "upper brackets" address in DC and never recovered.

Bad stockers are not a thing of the past, they’re still out there. Thankfully we have a number of excellent stockers still working and a few newer guys doing great work too.





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They were there in south central ohio 30 yrs ago when i had a nice German sxs re-stocked.

Cut barrels in addition to a bad stock on that 16 BE. Ruined a good gun. Too bad.