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Walnut Board for Stocks


neutron619
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Hello Chaps,

I'm just starting up on a project that I've wanted to attempt for quite a while now - refurbishing an 85-year-old garden gun I acquired some time ago.

The gun is useless for hunting so on one level I don't mind if I ****** it up, but all the same, I'd quite like to do a proper job of it as, so far, it's the only gun my boy (who is still very small) can shoot. Plus I'm not sure how I feel about letting him loose on my favourite .410 just yet.

My original plan was just to clean it up and re-blue it, but I'd always fancied a go at restocking a gun too and I figure, here's my chance.

I took the gun apart for a proper inspection the other day and - not wishing to sound too cavalier about it - the action is pretty basic and looks like it could be fitted to a new blank straightforwardly if I use the router and sander for the rough work and then hand tools to match it up perfectly.

The trouble is, because it's a bolt-action gun, a normal shotgun blank will be too short, so I'm looking either for a rifle blank or - preferably - a decent hunk of weathered walnut that I can machine myself.

I've made inquiries with a few stockers / 'smiths and they tend only to have shotgun blanks and those are nice pieces of wood that will be £100's or £1000's to buy. Timber merchants, meanwhile, want to deal by the ton, so that's probably not an option either.

What I really want, is a "lump" - something solid, air dried, but completely uninteresting that's worth it's weight in walnut and no more. Ideal dimensions would be 26" x 8" x 2".

Can anyone help, or point me in the right direction?

Thanks.

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6 minutes ago, ditchman said:

what about glueing two planks together...................or choose a different wood...........maple...rosewood...... 

Interesting thoughts. I'd thought about maple but this being the first gun I've ever worked on like this, I thought that I probably wasn't expert enough (read: at all) to deviate from "normal" which, I've always assumed, is walnut of one variety or another. As for gluing - well - yes, I could do that, but again, not being expert at any of this, I don't know how strong or resistant to recoil a stock with a split down the middle might be. I assume you're suggesting using two one inch boards glued face-on? I know a 9mm hardly moves when you fire it, let alone kicks, but I wonder whether a glue joint would be strong enough to stop the action moving backwards and eventually splitting the two halves? Perhaps I'm over thinking this...

10 minutes ago, The Burpster said:

Two suggestions, 1, speak to Dunks on here who is big into restorations. 2, maybe give Roy Martin Gunsmith a ring as he has lots of raw components (or certainly used to) as he at his best building and repairing best British guns. 

Dunks = Dunkield?

Thank you for the suggestion - I'll look Roy up.

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Hi. A lot of timber merchants might quote you a price per cubic meter. But you can buy what you want/need. And most will let you have a look to select the bit you want. Some wont cut stuff so you have to buy the board. But if you can glue an 8 by 1 inch board board together to make an 8 by 2 it should be fine. Plenty of glue and clamps. 

Good luck.

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1 hour ago, haynes said:

Hi. A lot of timber merchants might quote you a price per cubic meter. But you can buy what you want/need. And most will let you have a look to select the bit you want. Some wont cut stuff so you have to buy the board. But if you can glue an 8 by 1 inch board board together to make an 8 by 2 it should be fine. Plenty of glue and clamps. 

Good luck.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Just as an aside: further to my reading last night, I'm considering using beech on the basis of what I've read here on other threads on this forum and elsewhere. Apart from anything else, it's cheaper and in this case, given the gun is worth about £10, spending £50 on wood is probably a better bet than > £100 for a lump of walnut of the same size.

Certainly "prettiness" isn't a consideration, but does anyone want to warn me off beech for reasons of strength, durability, tendency to split, etc.?

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