Right, the drying of the stock to the extent it may split has been bugging me, so I got a hold of the old boat builder I know he is eighty three and knows his stuff about wood etc, he also used to go shooting and had many a 12g, push come to shove I asked him about drying the stock out on a rifle his reply (roughly) "what a load of bollox, the stuff they use is hard wood, kiln dried and machined, what they hell is there to dry out on a hardwood stock, its already been dried and if it was going to split they wouldn't waste their time trying to make a stock out of it, besides that its then oiled