This is the first forged Ballard rifle I ever bought, maybe 35 years ago? It started life at Marlin built the first year John Marlin took over building Ballard rifles, and uses a Marlin built receiver and breech block, but the rest is assembled from leftover Brown Mfg. parts; the company that made Ballards prior to Marlin.
Because it's a low 3 digit 1875 Ballard, it's got the deep crescent buttplate used by Brown Mfg., and being a .45-70 it can be painful to shoot! I restored the gun back when I first got it, and wanted to keep it 100% original style. But the buttplate is something I've always disliked to shoot. So recently I bought a box full of Ballard buttstocks, and one of them had no checkering, so I thought it was a great candidate to convert to pistol grip, and set the original stock and buttplate aside to save.
I started by just trying to see how it fit, and was surprised it didn't even slide on as the inletting was too tight to fit over the Ballard tapered round tang inside. So I painted up the tang and slid it in to see where it was too tight. Then using a rat tail coarse file I kept filing and trying it until it finally fit.
Next I taped up the receiver and used a black felt marker along the edge of the stock to show me how much too large it was. It was 3/16" too low at the bottom, which was expected for a straight grip receiver, but also slightly large on the sides. Using a half round coarse file I worked it down to just high of the metal, and slid it on to check. It fit well, but closing the lever revealed the loop hit the pistol grip before the lever slipped over the pin in the receiver. So I marked that area with a marker also, and kept filing with a half round file until the lever closed. Later I'll blend the area out into the pistol grip.
The stock had a flat base on the pistol grip instead of the nice S shape Marlin stocks had, so I marked the shape, and using a jeweler's saw I rough cut the S shape into it, and then final filed it smooth. I'll refine all the rough filing and shaping after I strip the wood, and prep it for new finish.
The stock has a nice Niedner fine checkered buttplate that should make the .45-70 much more comfortable to shoot! I'll try to match finish to the existing forearm, but if it's not a perfect match I'm OK with it since this is mainly to make shooting more comfortable.
New stock and old stock:
Old stock with the Brown deep crescent:
Pistol grip stock reshaped to fit and clear lever:
Still need final shaping to blend this relief into the pistol grip area: