Make Your Remington 597 Into A Survival Rifle

My little nephew liked what we had done to my Marlin, drilling and hollowing out the butt stock in order to fit some survival supplies inside it.  He had gotten good grades in school and his parents bought him a 22 rifle for his birthday, a Remington model 597. He very much wanted to do the same thing to it but there was a slight problem.  The stock on his rifle is plastic.

Hmmmmm. This was going to be different, drilling in plastic.  But wait a minute.  Some of these plastic stocks were said to be hollow.  I had read that some of them have cavities inside, already built in.  What about his rifle?  Might it be hollow?

Well certainly it might.  I instructed him to get a screwdriver and start tapping on it, to see if it sounded hollow.  And guess what?  It didn't.  It sounded like it was solid plastic, all the way through.  But it did have a butt plate of a different color.  But there were no screws holding it on.  I wondered if it would and how it might come off?

He used the tip of the screwdriver and tried to slip it under the edge of the butt plate to pry it off.  No deal.  It didn't seem to want to come off.  I wonder if it might be glued?  And if so, would the glue loosen up when it was heated?

So we laid the gun down on the floor, set a hair dryer next to the butt plate and left it on high heat for a few minutes.  Then he tried the screwdriver tip again and guess what?  The butt plate moved.  He moved the screwdriver to a different spot and got the butt plate to move even further.  In a few seconds he had popped it off.  And there didn't seem to be any glue at all holding it on.  It was just a press in fit.

And what was underneath the butt plate?  Take a look.

A big ol' freaking cavity.  Look at that thing.  You could probably put a freeze dried steak dinner in there if you wanted to.  But he didn't want to.  He wanted to fill it with survival items.  The pickings were slim at the moment but I did let him scrounge around in my tackle box to put together a small fishing kit and I had a couple of small glow sticks that I let him have.  He put an empty 1 gallon zip lock bag inside the stock and another small zip lock bag containing a few Vaseline impregnated cotton balls.  And he included some duct tape.  That is all we had access to at the moment but eventually there will be a small knife, a cigarette lighter, probably some ammunition and who knows what else he will put in there.  There is plenty of room, even for a candy bar.

The butt plate just pops in and out.

This is a 12 inch ruler that we put inside the cavity to see how deep it was.  It is 10 1/2 inches deep or so and apparently goes all the way into the pistol grip section.  You could put a lot of stuff in here.  You might want to include a piece of steel wire, so that you can use it to fish items out of the hole without having to dump everything out.

So if you have a Remington 597 and it happens to have a plastic stock, what are you going to put in yours?