A friend emailed me about a CMP 52D in a Doan Trevor claro prone stock for sale about a month ago; Doan is a friend of mine, and has done a couple of stocks for me in the past, one of which was a sporter he turned out on a fancy English walnut blank for another CMP 52D that I'd had Mike Ross re-barrel with a Broughton sporter contour blank. The appeal of having one of Doan's stocks on a 52D was pretty strong, both on a sentimental & practical basis. I'd like to shoot some informal smallbore any sight prone matches, and having sold an Anschutz 2011 last year to finance the purchase of a V-22S action (which I put into a McMillan Kestros stock that's suitable for 22RF F-Class, but not for prone), I was without a nicely stocked smallbore rifle. So you might say (even if it's a stretch) that I had a practical use for this 'new' 52D.
One of the neat things about it was that it'd had the Kenyon-style trigger pivot point movement modification done, which resulted in a very nice & light break with no creep. But of course, the main thing that attracted me to this rifle was the stock, which is a very near duplicate of the Robertson H&H prone stock that I have on three of my CF prone rifles, and which I like very much. The only downside to the stock was that the owner had Doan shorten the LOP a bunch, which resulted in a rather odd appearance, and it's profile is much smaller than the outline of the Tubb 3-way butt plate assembly I have on it currently. While it looks clunky set up this way, as long as it's comfortable for me in prone, I'll live with it until such time as I'm able to figure out what I want to do to improve its appearance. The claro blank the stock was made from isn't as fancy as some I've seen Doan use, but it's nothing to sneeze at either, with nice fiddleback grain, fine stippling of the grip, a contrasting walnut grip cap with pretty fiddleback grain, custom trigger guard/bottom metal, and his thumb wheel adjustable cheek piece.
I took it out to see how it shoots after robbing the Ken Vianni scope base off my other CMP 52D target rifle, then mounting a Sightron SIII 45x45 BR scope. It didn't particularly like any of the Lapua Center-X or SK Rifle Match I tried in it, even though the lots I shot are excellent in several Bartlein, Krieger, & Shilen barrels I've chambered with EPS & Nevius reamers. After giving it a thorough cleaning, I took it back out with several sample lots of Eley Match left over from testing a couple of years ago in the Anschutz I sold, and found that it shoots all these lots with considerably less vertical stringing than I'd seen with Lapua & SK. Borescoping this factory 52D bbl revealed no real damage to the chamber/leade area, but with all of the reamer chattering typical of factory barrels, except on lands in the bottom portion of the bore where the lands are worn to the point where the chatter marks are gone. It's not something I'd want to take to a 22RF BR match, but might still shoot good enough with lot-tested Eley Match or Tenex for smallbore. My initial inclination was to re-barrel it with a Benchmark 3-groove or Shilen ratchet blank, but we'll give the old OEM Winchester bbl a chance to see what it can do on the NRA 100yd smallbore target first. The 2nd photo shows a nice English walnut McGee Trudy pattern prone stock Doan finished for me, on a BAT 3L action that I fitted & chambered a Bartlein std Palma blank in 6.5x47 for. The bottom rifle is another BAT 3L in 6 Dasher with a Robertson H&H prone stock in their 'Vermont granite' color pattern.
