Nakihunter,

The 375 2.5" is not the same round as the 9.5MS. The 9.5 was designed to function out of a rotary magazine and is rimless. The 375NE has a rim. As far as bore condition its been shot and is worn but has lots of life left and hopefully this rifle will go back to Africa and serve at least one more tour of duty.

As far as inletting a tang or anything for that matter its pretty straight forward. I use two action guide screws and this guides the barreled action down into the two holes I drill into the blank. The bottom of the metal has inletting black brushed on. I then press the metal into the wood and remove. Anywhere the inletting black shows on the wood is where wood needs to be removed. Initial cuts can be pretty large to remove the bulk of the wood. The deeper you get and closer to the center line of the bore you get the less material you start taking out. The goal is to have the imaginary centerline of the receiver and bore to be inletted down to within about a 64th or so to the top of the stock line. Then come in from the bottom and using the guide pins that are screwed to the receiver, guide the bottom metal down and repeat the process. Depending on what kind of action it is I will either inlet the barreled action first or bottom metal first and what kind of mood Im in:)) If using a blank you need to determine if its symetrical in layout and figure on both sides. If no then you need to favor one side or the other and draw your center line. If a right handed stock is being made then true the right side on a joiner. Then lay on a flat surface plate or flat plate of glass and scribe your center line. Next remove everything that does not look like a stock. Well not really. Then layout the barreled action and draw out the pattern. Adjust accordingly fore and aft as necessary. Drill the action screw holes and start inletting. One way is with a hand held router to cut the barrel channel and rough out the action area. This is the way I was taught in gunsmithing school and it works great. Just have to have steady hands with the router. Let the chips fly. Once everything is inletted then you can cut out the profile and disc sand to the out line of the stock. Again put the center line back on the stock all the way around. Then you will want to start removing wood in a series of flats which get smaller and smaller with each series of flats. The only way to make a perfectly symetrical stock is to start from a blank!

Corbin