Photos below of the first prototype of a cheek piece I am making for my M1A. This is to raise the comb to optimize cheek weld so that I get a great and repeatable sight picture through the scope.
Shape is slightly irregular at this point as I am still perfecting it. I will probably shave down the right side quiite a bit.
Ideally I will get it cut down and fit it within the leather cheekpiece from Springfield. The rubber piece shown goes on the buttstock, then the cheekpiece, then the leather will go around it.
If that won't work, the plan is to mount it to the stock with stainless steel screws. I am not intersted in adjustability so it will be a solid mount, not like the Springield 'sniper' rifles with adjustable cheek pieces.
Any comments or recommendations welcome.
Brief description of how it is made follows pictures
Description:
This cheekpiece is made from solid American Walnut. I bought a large chunk at "Woodcraft" for about 10 bucks - enough to srew up making this piece about 5 times over :-)
So basically I used a band saw to cut a 6 inch by 2 inch by 2 inch piece, then used a needle gage to check the profile of the stock at each end of approximately where the cheekpiece would go. Then I just marked the cheekpiece and cut it out using woodworking tools like a roto tools, dremel, sanders. once the rough cutting was done I have several small planes and mini-finger planes that I used to finalize the shape before finish sanding with progressively finer grit, finishing at 1500 grit.
The finish is Old English and a little bit of random "dark wood" stain from a furniture repair stain pen. Then I rubbed in a few coats of boiled linseed oil.
THis finish will get messed up a bit as I keep adjusting the profile, but it was a good experiment to match the wood grain of the rifle and now that I have the recipe, repeating it will be simple.
If you have an M1A and are interested in discussing further how to make something like this, PM me.