Making & Inletting the Toe Plate:

I wanted to make my toe plate for this rifle. I took a pattern from a gunsmith who was a mentor of J.P. Beck, named Nicholas Meyer.

Started with a piece of .062" brass and glued my paper pattern to the brass and then cut the segment out of the sheet. Then with a combination of various files, I filed the metal down to the pattern.

Next I drilled the pilot mounting holes into the toe plate with a 1/16" drill bit.

With the hole drilled, I positioned the toeplate on to the stock, with the toeplate hanging about 1/16" over the end of the stock.

Now I could clamp the toe plate to the stock. With the toe plate secured to the stock, I drilled thru the 1/16" pilot holes in the plate into the stock.

Once the holes were drilled, I redrilled the pilot holes in the toe plate with a 9/64" bit to serve as clearance hole for the #4 screws I wanted to mount the toe plate with.  Using a countersink bit, the surface holes in the plate were counter sunk for the heads of the screws.

The plate was then remounted onto the stock and the the screws were driven into the 1/16" pilot holes previously drilled in the stock. This held the plate in position for inletting.

Once the plate was inletted. it was removed and the butt plate was reinstalled. A "safe" file was used with the safe side down on the stock and the file's teeth on the side were used to cut into the butt plate. This was done to the same depth as the toe plate overlap on the stock. (you may have to do a little trial and error to get a good fit.) Now the toe plate was reinstalled. Using a peen hammer, peen the bottom of the butt plate over the end of the toeplate. You may have to file down the excess brass above the plate to make this easier.  Here is how it should look.   If you look closely, you can see the toe plate overlapping into the butt plate. Next I filed the excess metal off and cleaned it up.

Here is the final result.

With the toe plate installed, I then redrew the lines along the belly of the stock up to the trigger guard and then evened up the sides leading up to the trigger guard.

Then I put in an incised relief line on either side of the stock along the lower edge of the butt stock.

  Next I will work on the patchbox installation.