My Remington rifle that I bought new in 1978 is one of the most used guns that I own. The main reason for that is because it's my deer hunting rifle, which is chambered in .270 and has worked great for all these years. It's a model 700 BDL that set me back less than two hundred dollars back then. However, I've done some upgrades to it over the years but one of the best was a new rifle stock made by Bell and Carlson, which I bought back in the mid 80's. This Bell and Carlson stock (below) is made out of Kevlar and fiberglass and is very strong.

How do I know it's strong you ask? Well... when I had horses back in the 90's, I used them to help me get into the mountains to deer hunt. And not once, but twice, my horse rolled on the ground while my rifle was in a scabbard strapped to his side. I thought for sure I'd pull the gun out and see a broken stock but no. And it's survived countless trips into the mountains, being under water (yeah, my horse decided to roll while getting a drink out of a river in Utah) along with many rain and snow storms over the years.

Lately I've thought about buying a new rifle stock because of all the improvements that companies have made throughout the years. However, mine is like an old friend that I just didn't want to part with. Besides, I don't know how many years I have left to hunt now that age is a factor. With that being said, let's look at a few things that I'm going to address on my old stock.

One thing I going to change is my 'sling'. My old sling is made out of leather and was bought along with the stock many years ago and has lasted better than I ever thought, but it doesn't want to stay on my shoulder very well. While I'm walking, it tends to slip off and I have to keep messing with it. This can get frustrating at times while you re-adjust it over and over again so this was on my short list of things to do.
 

What you see below is how my sling attaches, which is not what you would see today. Most rifle stocks have a 'sling swivel screw' sticking out that you can attach a quick-release sling swivel onto. Now my old wooden stock that came with my rifle (when it was new) had these sling swivel screws but for some reason this old Bell and Carlson does not. Well I'm going to upgrade this as well.
 

My leather sling was very hard to remove after all these years, I believe the leather has expanded to the point that I could hardly pull it out of that pocket.
 

Here is the hardware that held the sling on. And the screws were really hard to remove because it looks like I used Loctite on them. To break them loose I had to use Vise-Grips because using only a screwdriver wouldn't cut it.

I'll show you more about the new sling and how I'm going to mount it later but before I do I'll show you another upgrade I'll be doing.
 

My recoil pad was rock-hard and was in desperate need of replacing. Suffering from old age I'm sure. What I needed to do was remove and replace it, which is normally no big deal. All you do is take out two screws, swap recoil pads and call it a day. But after trying to find said screws in my old pad, I couldn't.

I put a call into Bell and Carlson to ask them how they attached there pads and they said they were screwed and glued on. I told them how old this stock was and they said "all' of there stocks were done this way. Well...as you can see this wasn't the case with mine. However, they did tell me to aid in getting the pad off was to stick the stock in the freezer over night (to freeze the glue), then tap on the pad and it should break free. Sure enough that worked but they were wrong about the screws holding it on.
 

I know I'll need to place one of the attach points near the front somewhere and I might be able to use one of those pockets to my advantage. However, I'll need to know how thick this area is before I start putting holes in it.
 

After looking at my options, I think I'm going to use the old sling pocket areas for my new hardware. But I'll need to remove the old sling mounting pins first (arrow). And come to find out, those old pins are made out of steel (magnetic).