Man, all this discrimination! I never met a gun I didn't like.

I've bought a couple just because I liked the looks among other reasons. But I find I don't shoot them as much as the others because I don't want anything to happen to them. I just pull them out, caress them for a bit and put them back up. Stupid I know.

I've always though stainless looks fine with a black synthetic stock, and as synthetics have become more varied in color and texture I think stainless looks fine in them also. I think stainless in a fine walnut stock is just plain weird and don't care for it at all.

I have a few rifles that are blued or finished to LOOK blued, wearing black synthetics. I don't really mind that at all and they're very good rifles. I value them highly for their utility. I just don't admire them much.

Fine lines and definitions, throw in subjective taste. We all like different stuff for the same reasons or the same stuff for different reasons. Every perspective is unique.

But this...I think all of us who are normal would agree this is just plain hideous.

Yall still at this?

Go before show.

I want it to run like a Singer sewing machine, shoot bugholes, and not get me busted by a coyote.

Dang skippy.

Your ding will be memorable. Mine isn't all that memorable, just a dead axis, shot from the porch.

Mmmm...but then there's always "carry like a nice hunting rifle," JG. Go before show is a good philosophy, but what's going unrecognized is that rifles underwent evolution for centuries and became ever so gradually the Model 70 and what evolved from it afterward. Until the "tacticool" craze caught on. Some will agree with you that 14-pound rifles with giant freekin bolt handles and all kinds of stock doodads is what "go" all about...and for some purposes that may be true. For many of us, it's not..."go" is something else all together.

That's the funny thing about wood. It records history, and has done so throughout history. I guess that maybe in time we'll look at synthetic stocks and say they record history too, but only by being either still in use or in a landfill.

Call me stupid. After taking a nice buck with my new Winchester Model 70 the first season after I bought it, it pretty much stays in the safe, except for an occasional trip to the range. There are others that may never leave the safe until they're given to the kids after my death.

That is so true. And sometimes those dings and cracks become linked to family events and legends.

There's an old shotgun in my wife's family with a cracked stock. The crack came at the hands of my wife's great grandfather when he used it to kill a wolf that had attacked her great grandmother when she had gone down to a peach orchard. She survived the attack but lost a breast as a result. As the account was told through the years, he had to use the gun to beat the wolf off the poor woman since shooting it might have injured his wife even worse.

I like wood and blued metal and appreciate the patina of a well used but cared for gun. The Japanese use the term Wassabe for attractiveness or character developed thru use which describes what I like and why I tend to buy used guns. It might kill me to scratch a new gun, but adding to the wassabe of an item doesn't as long as it's expected wear.,

I like wood and blued steel. Always have.

But, I will say my accumark is dead sexy.

There are times when a synthetic rifle makes more sense than wood but for 80% of hunting a wood rifle is fine

Lightweight and balanced? You bet!

As long as nothig on it is shiny is alls I was meaning. I dont like gloss blued, or shiny stainless. Yes I need to get that fixed on a couple of my bolts.

My favorites have oil finished walnut stocks and mat blued metal finish.

Nothing fancy, that said one being that is in the works now will have a walnut stock, silver bolt handle and stainless barrel on a blued receiver, or at least that is what it will start off with, might coat it at some point and put the blued bolt handle back on it.