HOW TO CRACK A STOCK

[Bruce Day]

Originally Posted by John Campbell

In order to understand what happened here, and in many other attempts to revive classic double guns, certain truths must be accepted and allowed for:

1) Wood is a natural product of carbon-based life. It is not immortal. It also dries out with age. This cannot be changed.

2) The wood used in the gunstocks of old doubles is often more than 100 years old, as it was formed into a stock. Not including the time it took to grow. Some of that wood is Black Walnut, which was barely suitable going in.

3) The wood used in old gunstocks has been subjected to perhaps thousands of impact shocks. There is a limit to the number of such shocks each piece can withstand under the circumstances of its age and treatment.

4) The wood of old gunstocks is often oil soaked. This weakens the wood. Attempts to “remove” this oil most often make the wood more brittle and less able to resist shock. Leaving the oil in is bad, too. It’s Catch 22.

5) Shock loading such old wood to more than its limits often results in failure. Why? Because the wood is old. It’s been abused. And has reached a threshold in its application past which it cannot continue to hold up. And it splits, cracks and fails.

6) The design of old doubles provides a number to “wedge Points” that work to split the stocks. The top tang and rear curves of the lockplates are only a few. They drive back into old, brittle shrunken wood with every shot. There are few ways around this.

7) Moral: You can draw out oil and refinish old stocks. You can glass bed the stock head. But don’t expect such stocks to be as strong as they were when new. It’s still OLD wood. Respect that. Use light loads and be glad they still hold up for now.

Interesting views. I'll be sure to break the news gently to my old P 16 with not cracked , not oil soaked black walnut stock that has had over 80,000 rounds through it. No more 1 1/8 loads ..... until next fall pheasant season.

[Fishtail]

I think Kensal's comments are not meant to be applied to every single gun stock ever made but rather most, or even many, of them. I could be wrong.

It's probably fair to say that once a stock has been oil soaked, there's no returning to its former strength. If a stock has never seen 'oil soak' or other abuse, and it was a good piece of wood to begin with, it's probably still close to its original strength.

When you consider all the wood that's 'inletted' out of the head of a stock, it's a miracle any of them hold up as well as they do.

[J. A. EARLY]

All one has to do is disassemble both a hammer gun and a hammerless to understand the weakness of the hammer compared to the nearly twice as thick hammerless. I was spoiled in my thinking by the latter.

[charlie cleveland]

jerry i hate that your stock broke...in all these old guns im like you i use heavy loads..i ve only ever had but one broke stock in shooting these old guns it was a 1894 remington double barrel hammerless.. was shooting doves and i thought the old gun had doubled on me butonly one shell had fired..it broke the stock..i glued it back to gether and then put a tape around her and shes holing up fine...charlie

[chris dawe]

Originally Posted by Carl Erickson Jr

Did you coat the inside of the stock with a dilute cynoacrylate glue? I do that to seal all of the little cracks in the stock after it has had the oil removed. I believe that epoxy will not get into the little cracks.

On the contrary Carl ,epoxy can be thinned ...I've worked on a couple bad ones in the past .

[Eric Estes]

For stabilizing old, clean, dried out, punky wood which is better? The super thin cyanoacrylate or thinned epoxy? I have used the thin cyanoacrylate and it soaks up like water and seems to go real deep, leaving old abused wood like a rock. I have not tried thinned epoxy. I do bed with acraglass after soaking in lots of cyano. I know many luthiers rely on cyano and even finish fretless fingerboards with it. Not sure what folks think of it in the gun world.

[chris dawe]

My original reply was to thin epoxy to get into the crack ,it will be stronger than super glue

[Big D]

How do you thin epoxy? Lacquer thinner?

[Eric Estes]

Interesting article.
http://www.westsystem.com/ss/thinnin...-system-epoxy/

[William Davis]

CA glue will penetrate soft punky wood and make it rock hard. Wood turners use it for "splated" bowls. Wood that actually rotten and coming apart. Those natural edge bowls you see, bark on the edges. Squirted with CA before they are turned. I keep it in my shop in 3 viscosity's thin, medium thick, and a special formula intended for toy race car tires that has some elasticity dry. Useful on fly rods tha have to flex.

I don't use it on gunstocks though so thin it seeps into places I might not want, and once on it won't come off no 2nd chances. Total re work save something that's a loss otherwise, it's the stuff to use.

You can get epoxy in different viscosity too. Look at West Systems web site. Others probably as good but West packages and provides technical assistance better than others.

William