CoalTrain49
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I've noticed that the walnut on many new Winchester lever rifles is garbage complete with knots and wavy grain. Never used to see that. They must be running out of walnut trees.
Where has all the wood gone?
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Mark_Mark
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I like knots and crazy grain. Like the Root part of the Walnut tree
CoalTrain49
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Yeah, burls are nice to look at in a table but they try to avoid in stocks because of strength issues. Stockers would never use it 50 years ago. Had to be straight grain and clear.
Mark_Mark
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Sounds EXPENSIVE
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Poper
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Those are awful!!
You better send them to me where they will be appreciated. Hurry! Before they spoil!
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Poper
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Less than half my collection has wood furniture on them. I like black, polymer, and metal. For the past 7 or so years I do most of my deer and varmint hunting with an AR of one variety or another. Nearly all my handguns are wood-less, even most of my revolvers have rubber grips, The only exceptions is most of my shotgun do have wood (a fair number of doubles of one type or another) but the one that gets hunted with most has polymer furniture. I got nothing against wood but for hard use and bad weather it's hard to beat polymers.
Yes. But there is just something about the dents, dings and scratches my hunting rifles collect that make those hunting trips so much more memorable. It's as if each mark collected is a mini-recording of a hunting memory. Mostly in the wood, some on the metal. All are memories that are treasured and often remembered in front of the fireplace or around the campfire.
Guess I'm getting a little soft in my old age. I kind of like it that way, tho.
.308 Norma
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I wish I could draw. If I could, I’d draw a cartoon of an old-time cowboy or mountain man looking at a rack of Sharps, Spencer and Ballard cartridge-firing rifles in the General Store. And he would be whining about how those “newfangled” cartridge-firing rifles have “no soul.” “Rifles should load from the front” I’d have him say. Of course the store owner would be trying his hardest to convince the cowboy or mountain man that cartridge firing rifles are more reliable than muzzle loaders.
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Air-drying wood will not bring the moisture content down enough to prevent it from warping. It needs to be kiln dried down to a 5%-7% moisture level, what I believe is called "furniture grade." A cabinet-maker friend of mine had his wood brought down to a 3% level and said it would then settle back up to between 5% and 7% when stacked in a temperature/humidity controlled room. I don't have any experience with this; just relaying info told to me.
beag_nut
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Since I did not read all the replies to this thread I will say: gunstock wood does not grow on trees!
jdsingleshot
Member
I haven't hunted in the rain for decades.
Would you rather have plastic
, than this?
Would you rather have plastic
, than this?
That is very helpful…thank you! I believe my father in law knows someone with a kiln…I’ll give him a call.
This is an awesome forum…
Mark_Mark
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there has gotta be a way to do it naturally. They been working with wood since we left the Caves
depends on local conditions but unless you are in Florida or Louisiana or somewhere with super high humidity you can generally get woods moisture content down to 5-7% without a kiln. Kilns just do it a lot faster.
plainsdrifter
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I have several pro grade wood meters since I install wood flooring.Here's what most woods moisture content is running.
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Old Dog
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Did we over-think this whole wood and blue steel thing as much back in the '60s (or the 1860s ... through the 1950s)?
I worked at a sawmill in VA for a year which had a kiln. They brought the wood down to 17%. That seems to be the general rule for building lumber, and if you have bought any lumber lately, you can almost watch it warp and twist and not waste a lot of time. The 17% is what they said "air drying" would do, perhaps just in this location. I don't have any real experience in this area so go by what these people tell me. The cabinet maker I mentioned (long departed) said air drying would never get it to "furniture grade." YMMV
Since I did not read all the replies to this thread I will say: gunstock wood does not grow on trees!
You're right, some of it comes from the roots!!
I only have one rifle with a plastic stock my Mauser M03. Very practicle stock. All my other rifles have wooden stocks. Hunted several days with the double rifle in the rain last season. Dry it out properly reoil- wax and it comes up like new. At the end of the season a damp, folded cotton cloth and hot iron lifts out the dings and scratches.
My LGS had a day where their suppliers came and showed their wares. Sauer were there and had their range of rifles on display. One rifle had a very high quality walnut stock but they had put rubber inserts instead of chequering. Rubber inserts on a quality walnut stock goes against all that is write and proper and so wrong. I had to have a minor rant at their rep about it. I don't think the walnut and rubber was very popular as I don't think it features in their range now.
My LGS had a day where their suppliers came and showed their wares. Sauer were there and had their range of rifles on display. One rifle had a very high quality walnut stock but they had put rubber inserts instead of chequering. Rubber inserts on a quality walnut stock goes against all that is write and proper and so wrong. I had to have a minor rant at their rep about it. I don't think the walnut and rubber was very popular as I don't think it features in their range now.
JR24
Member
The older I get the less nostalgic I get for wood and blue and the more I appreciate practicality. I tend to use all my equipment hard, so extra durability is always nice.
Not that I still don’t appreciate some of my nice wood and steel rifles and shotguns.
Not that I still don’t appreciate some of my nice wood and steel rifles and shotguns.
CopperFouling
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Mark_Mark
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I got a Beretta A400 Excel that you custom fit to yourself. It’s my best shooting shotgun! Very light because of the Laminated wood. Beside, are we showing off or shooting? because we could just hand bars of gold around our neck and call it a fest.
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Poper
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If it will fit in the microwave (thinking shotgun butt stock and/or fore stock) run it for two minutes, check moisture content and continue as needed to get where you need to be. It works for me with rough turned bowls and similar sized pieces.
weeniewawa
Member
my guess would be the cost but also maybe there are not as many talented people who can turn out a nice wood stock anymore.
Speedo66
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My opinion is this is the direction manufacturers would like to head. No doubt the rubber insert cost less for them to make than to have someone checker the stock. They will extol the virtues of it, but the reality is it's just a cost cutting mechanism.
While I understand there are some benefits to synthetic stocks, I think the big push by the makers has more to do with profit than practicality.
Here's a nice piece of wood on a typical Swedish hunting rifle by VO Vapen. I kid, these things go for US $300K-800K. Usually bought by kings and sheiks, not something you throw in your Koenigsegg as a truck gun.
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CapnMac
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And are not the woodworker's friend [some of it comes from the roots!!
] All curvy and with rocks and grit in the grain, so, very tough on tools. The wavy grain is not much help, either. You want the grain to run straight from nosecap to butt, as that's where you want the strength to be.MW will boil the water out of the sap, and the sap will "plasticize" as a result. There's a reason that steam heated drying kilns are the industry standard. (It's not damp steam from your iron or teakettle, this is dried stuff capable of holding immense thermal gradients you pull off a proper boiler, many drying kilns use steam at temps from 400° to 600°--the choice on that is based on the MC of the wood in the kiln and the desired end dryness--and whether you are planning on pressure-treating it.)
Cost is a huge factor. Good clear stock is not cheap, and it's expensive to store and stockpile before use. The tooling to "machine" wood is not cheap, either. Carbide cutters are the industry standard, but hardwood will wear them down. So the machine operators and QC are constantly having to measure tooling dimensions. Single-point NC machines are still the go-to, as the expense of multi-axis tool changer CNC machines is hard to recover from the price of the finished product.
The labor cost of skilled operators--which includes guys skilled in sanding and finish work--is pretty significant.
Which is why we can see so many 'marginal' wood stocks on recent production. Wood with knots and goofy (e.g. "not pretty") grain figuring and really minimal finishing are all too often the rule.
Mind, if I'm going to be out laying in the pre-dawn dew to snipe picket pins while the sun comes up to bake all dry, I would not look askance at a synthetic stock that is not changing dimension through all that (and with a varmint rig, I'm using a heavier barrel, heavier scope, and the like, so using a dimensionaly stable stock that offsets that weight gain makes sense to me).
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