I wanted to share this project that I just wrapped up with the members here. It was a little different for me being that I usually see American doubles. But I was up for the challenge.
The 400/360 boxlock had been previously restocked in American Walnut. The person who did the work did a great job at inletting the woodwork, but the whole thing was way off by way of form and styling, And it even had a beavertail forend on it! I was really impressed by the solution they came up with to still utilize the push button and original forend tip. Certainly some skill was needed to execute that, but the design really fell short.
A lot of the metal work was badly pitted from old rust under the surface of the wood. I called on Glen Fewless to laser weld up the worst of it so that I could have better surfaces to work with when inletting.
The owner of the gun wanted it put back as right as possible and provided me with a very nice blank to make the new stock from. I felt like it may have been a little too plain, but it really came to life when I shaped it. I could not find a ton of good photographic examples of other Frasers in this same action type, but I dug up enough to be able to nail down an accurate design for the stock and forend. I used the old restock as my pattern, reworked it with body filler and the like to get it where it needed to be for my pantograph. The owner specified no cheek piece and left had cast with a silvers pad.
The checkering is cut at 22 lines per inch on the forend and wrist, and 26 lines per inch on the cheeks. Getting the shape of the inside of the forend to match the contour of the barrels was a time consuming process. It took me about twice as long as fitting wood to the barrels normally takes me on other guns.
A number of the screws had to be replaced along the way, and they were engraved to match originals by Geoffroy. I reused the grip cap that was on the old stock as it was similar in in basic style to what Fraser put on their guns. I just removed the checkered center from it and re-blued it.
Fortunately the original sling eye was still in the old stock, however it was just screwed into the wood like any regular eye would be. I had to get a little creative in getting the eye into the stock the way that Fraser did it on their guns. which involved making a tool for installing and removing it.
I am pretty happy with how the project turned out. What do you guys think?
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Restock of a Daniel Fraser Double Rifle
Threaded Mode