I've seen such things, a few that were perfectly ideal lightweight sporting rifles...

Someone's gotta have an image or two in their archives of a Small Ring (1895...) custom sporter here.

I might have something in a book here to scan and put on this thread to seed the flow of images, hopefully y'all know what I'm talking about and can put some images up of what you have or have seen.
I've been custodian of an absolutely perfect Chilean 7mm (no thumb cut, perfect metal everywhere, ultra slick, completely perfect bore...) that I've been wanting to trim out a bit.
The rifle belonged to a childhood friend's grandfather who'd cut the stock back in the 50's

--Tinker