Gun stock wood

[bornfree]

Apart from some cheap air rifle stocks made from beech, are all stocks made of walnut?

[ditchman]

americans sometimes use mapel..

[dipper]

Had a leach hammer gun 3” with a oak stock

[Ultrastu]

I think the plastic ones arent walnut .🤣

Beech is by far the most common wood used followed by walnut .

But some indonesian hard woods are also used 

My brocock is a tropical hard wood .

Obviously we now have laminated stocks too .

These will mainly be from birch ply .

Ive seen maple /oak / cherry and even pine used 

 

[bornfree]

I cut down some dead elm trees last week for firewood and although these have been dead for at least 20 years and have no bark on them the wood is hard as iron. Just wondered if it has ever been used as a stock.

[Ultrastu]

Elm (english elm ) .is a very beutiful wood. But the grain doesnt flow  in straight lines .it twists and turns all over .this makes it very hard to shape .but then its also nigh onbimpossible to split the wood along its grain as it has no linea direction .

If you look at an old dining room chair or school chair .the seat will be made of elm. This is because of the holes that need to be drilled in it at the rear to take the up right (ash ) poles that make up the back rest .any other wood and they holes would split out and fail 

[figgy]

I have seen some stunning wood used for gun stocks on Instagram Mr winsauer. Not all are walnut. 

Some birds eye burl maple looks cracking finished on a gun.

[labstaff]

I've got a stock on an old field target air rifle that's made of hyedua. Has a lovely look about it.

[JohnfromUK]

Walnut is an excellent 'all rounder', ranging from quite plain to quite wonderful.  Ideally should have straight grain running through the 'hand'.  Nice to work, can be bent, resists insect attack, seasons nicely to a stable state.

Oak is heavy, and steel in contact with oak may/will rust (due to the tannic acid).  New oak is slow to season and moves through changes in temperature/humidity, but easy to work.  Old oak gets very hard.

Beech is cheaper than walnut and has little grain and is 'dull' to look at.

Birds eye maple has been used on a few very 'exotic' stocks, but is very expensive and I understand hard to work, possibly brittle.

I don't know why mahogany isn't used as it has many of the advantages of walnut.

[Ultrastu]

Because its a band  timber .you break the law if you buy or sell it. 

[Dibble]

Don't know what my son's Baikal is, maybe a slow growing fir, but it's spectacularly hard to drill.