Maybe "fat" is a personal opinion like many other things. Labs are lovely no matter how many "handles" they have
When you pin things, they must be lined up well. However, you cannot line them up perfectly to get a final perfect fit, so you have a bit larger hole with the glue/epoxy filling the excess allowing the final perfect fit. Now another way to do it even closer (and stronger) is to drill fron the stock face (if design allows). Then gluing into place. This is done on Weatherbys which have an overly delicate wrist and poorly angled for strength. At first, they were VERY careful in picking good grain in the wrist. They also made the wrist thicker on larger calibers(like on the first 460 W'by which is owned by a friend...in Myrtle). There were still breaks due to the pretty but weak design so first in the larger calibers in the latter 1960's then in all their guns, they started putting pins (5/16" steel) from the rear of the action about 4" into the beginning of the butt behind the wrist. I was an expert witness against them when they forget to put the pin in the hole one time on a 270 W'by with extremely poor grain flow. The resulting shot gave the shooter brain damage. It was an expensive lesson for W'by. At that time (1997), the stocks were made and finsihed in Italy, checked by W'by (but only for external blemishes), then sent to Saco to be mated to the metal. On a few guns, the pin was not put into the hole and everyone missed it. Since it was assumed that the pin would keep them safe from breaks, there was little emphasis put on checking grain flow. Poor assumption.
In the 1940's, Parker put wooden dowells in a few (about 100) shotgun buttstocks to give added strength. They sell for a high premium if you know what to look for.
