I can tell you for a fact that after duplication of fancy wood some rather amazing thing happens. I once had a buttstock that drifted down 1/4" after turning and inletting over a 3 month period of time. That wood was air dried and well over 10 years old. Lots of stress is relieved during the turning process. That said, I was in Japan in the 1980's and went to the Weatherby Factory and even then they had CNC machines for the frames and stock carving machines that could do 4 Athena stocks in a matter of minutes. Saw the same thing in the Merkel factory in Germany in 1997 when I toured the factory there. Final fitting was done by hand, but there wasn't much left to do by the stockmakers at the end. Interesting, in the case of both Germany and Japan, all checkering was done by ladies.
