About To Fit A Choate Stock - Any Advice?

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PostPosted: Fri Nov 02, 2012 1:45 am
Hello, all.

I'm about to acquire a Choate stock and forend for my early-eighties M37 DSPS.

Has anyone any advice/comments/anecdotes that they'd care to pass on before I attempt to fit it?

The items are the mark five ones, I believe.

I'm fitting these because the existing wooden stock has split. I shoot PSG with it so it has to be able to survive a fair bit of abuse.

Thanks.

Regards,

Mark.
Last edited by ChAoS on Fri Nov 02, 2012 1:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Came late in life to shooting but is making up for lost time...

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PostPosted: Fri Nov 02, 2012 11:04 am
Not sure what a Choate stock is. If you are referring to a synthetic stock of some type it should be rather straight forward, with out much in the way of hand fitting. You will most likely need a tool for the for arm though. Spanner wrenches work best however I have herd of people wrapping tape around a butter knife and using it to get the nut off of the top of the fore arm.
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 02, 2012 1:24 pm
1977cutcher wrote:Not sure what a Choate stock is.


One of these:

http://www.midwayusa.com/product/191242 ... etic-black

They do a PG verion but that was out of stock so I decided to just go with the "trad" stock.

I'm also getting one of these:

http://www.midwayusa.com/product/177169 ... site-black

it should be rather straight forward, with out much in the way of hand fitting.


I'm glad to hear that.

You will most likely need a tool for the for arm though. Spanner wrenches work best however I have herd of people wrapping tape around a butter knife and using it to get the nut off of the top of the fore arm.


S'funny that you should say this. I took up shootin' about three years ago, after Dad died. He had several shotguns including three pumps: a Remington 870 Wingmaster, a Higgins M20 and, of course, an Ithaca M37 DSPS in M&P livery.

After enquiring on a forum that I frequented, I was invited to a clay shoot. I took the early-eighties Ithaca thinking that it looked the most rugged and that I'd be unlikely to break it. ("Chaos" isn't a cool nickname, it's a *description*...) In the event, after eight shots I managed to break the spot welds that hold the forend tube onto the action bar.

I couldn't get the forend nut off and took it to a 'smith. After a week, he rang to say that he couldn't get it apart. Luckily, I knew a retired engineer - a *real* engineer, not a "technician". This man had served his time on the lathe before moving upwards into management.

Anyhoo, he told me to make a jig on my lathe; two short cylinderical lumps of aluminium, one to fit into each end of the tube. In addition, he said that I'd swaged the threads of the forend nut so he had me file the top couple of threads at the appropriate point. The top cylinder of the jig had a couple of small holes for short lengths of steel which would locate in the slots in the forend nut. It also had a large hole for a tommy-bar. The bottom cylinder was merely held in a vice.

When I first turned it, I thought that the steels had come out of the slots because it all turned so easily. In fact, the forend nut was coming *off*. I'd *bent* pieces of flat steel trying to get that nut off but the simple addition of a jig and it came off very easily.

I *hope*, of course, that the nut on *this* gun comes off as easily. We'll see.

By the way, the reason that the spot welds failed was that it had only two spot welds - I believe later guns have four - but only *one* had "taken". So, for thirty years, the gun had operated on only one spot weld. It worked just fine until Captain Chaos came along...

Thanks for the reply.

I'll let the forum know how I get on.

Bye fer now.

Regards,

Mark.
Came late in life to shooting but is making up for lost time...
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 17, 2013 7:46 am
I've just noticed that I haven't updated this thread.

Short version is: Fitted the Choate stock (forend did *not* fit), hated it, took it off and I'm now back with the (glued) original wooden stock.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=NHEl2unHnKQ

Regards,

Mark.
Came late in life to shooting but is making up for lost time...

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