Richard,
One more thing I'll share, for roughing these pieces like this - there are router bits on Amazon that cost pennies compared to endmills.  Don't shoot the poster for sharing pictures of a non vintage firearm project but a fixture I made for holding wood on the mill along with the cutter...
GT

I've used my small mill several times to cut barrel channels in forearms. Saves a lot of time getting them roughed in, and only takes a short amount of time afterwards to get the final fit.

Inletting the stocks for those 1885 Winchester HW and LWs are a bearcat! Have done 2 and I really struggled with them, yours looks great so far. I assume you must have had someone weld up the holes in the side of the receiver intended for the micrometer sight?  If so they did a great job, matches the metal perfectly.

I'm still banging rocks together here. No fancy store-bought cutters for me. I make my barrel channel cutters out of slices of the cutoffs of the barrels I've installed. Depending on the taper of the barrel it can take very little fitting once cut.

Only two thin flutes so I have to feed slow and make light cuts on my vertical mill (and let the cutter cool down some after a few passes), but it leaves a nice finish. I hold my shop vac nozzle by the cutter to suck up the chips.

My good friend Bob taught me this method when I first started hanging around him and learning how to run a lathe and mill. He's "thrifty", just like me.

These cutters aren't pretty, but they work just fine.

Jerry, nothing wrong with that bbl channel cutter. A fine case of “ simplicity rules”.
All good ideas fellas.
Cheers Richard

As with a lot of machining operations how to hold the work takes up most of ones gray matters time. One this rifle I wanted something different to hold the forend to the barrel other than with the typical way it’s done with a screw, for two reasons one is to go old school that looks cool and the other is to stretch my abilities. The tenon is about .090” thick and around .375” wide.
I used a carbide screw machine length carbide drill held in an ER11 collet chuck, figuring this would be a pretty stiff set up for peck drilling a fairly deep hole. After locating and fixing the barreled action, I located the position of the slot in the lug the the tenon will pass through. Then I put the forend on and proceeded to drill four holes in a line in the wood by pecking away only half way through the forearm then using a small endmill I cleaned up the slot. The milling cutter was pretty short loc was about .375. After doing one side I broke the setup to do the other side.
Using a surface grinder a ground a mild steel piece to the same dims of the key but about 5 inches long with one end having a slight taper. This tool I heated up with a propane torch to under red heat and used it to burn my way through the slot using about four or five tries. Then fitting the forend back on I found I had to file about .010” or so off the inside bottom of the bbl lug. The tenon now has a snug sliding fit. I’m a happy camper. Next up I’m going to attempt making a steel forend tip, something to replace the Ebony insert that Winchester used.
Continues 

Well done! Looks perfect and very traditional style.

Richard, Greg, thank you! BTW the .22 is doing pretty good at this seasons 100 yd bullseye competition. Hope you guys ar3 getting out and punching holes.
Cheers Richard