Stock repair and refinish?

well, I got brave and pulled the action off the stock. And apparently the crack is clean through, though still fairly tight, and someone had tried to glue it up once before apparently.

The part that concerns me about pinning it (aside from my unsteady hand with a drill) is that it's on a very delicate area of the rifle. It's right along the edge and tip of the fore-end, and i'm terrified of splitting it worse if i bugger it up.

If i can snitch my GF's digicam, i'll make some pics and upload them, to show you where I mean.

Do you think a good slather of strong epoxy between the two cracked surfaces would be a good fix if I chicken out of pinning it?

Also, while i have the gun apart, i'm thinking of bedding the action, and pondering the idea of either free-floating or glass-bedding the barrel. Any thoughts, or are these operations above a beginner's head?

Finally, I'll try your idea about steaming out the dents, but I've also heard that this won't work if the actual wood grain's broken, as is the case in a few of the spots. Any comments?

Thanks,

Jon

The steaming trick works very well, but you might try to keep it secret from your wife as she might baulk as you use her steam iron on an old gun stock.

Remember to remove all of the metal first.

After the stock has been steamed and sanded a little (not too much!), and maybe hit with a little fine steal wool. Apply some walnut stain. Then after it all dries put on some satain finish. You can go for more gloss, but be careful as you can get carried away.

There are some nice stock finishing kits in gun stores. They'll work just fine, but a gun stock is just furniture and anything you'd use to refinish an old hutch will work.

As for the crack. I'd try to open it a tad and push in some white glue, or you might try epoxy. You can also just rub some white glue into the crack and wipe of the residue.

It's important that you don't get carried away. A stock that is over finished is as ugly to one that is just dinged up.

Thanks all,

As it wound up, I just stripped all the old finish and gunk off it (if estimates of the gun's age are on, prolly about 50 years worth of scrud), gave it some sanding (down to about 320 grit, ignoring the wood imperfections and the really deep gouges, cuz I don't feel like screwing with filler), then sealed with thinned tung oil and rubbed in several coats of linseed oil.

It ended up with a nice "antiquey" satiny finish, with just enough of the old imperfections showing through to keep some character

It looks nice to me, and hey, I'm the only one whose opinion matters, right?

Jon

PS: As for the crack, I used Elmer's brown carpenter's glue (the kind marketed for darker colors of wood). Seems to have worked okay

Thanks all,

As it wound up, I just stripped all the old finish and gunk off it (if estimates of the gun's age are on, prolly about 50 years worth of scrud), gave it some sanding (down to about 320 grit, ignoring the wood imperfections and the really deep gouges, cuz I don't feel like screwing with filler), then sealed with thinned tung oil and rubbed in several coats of linseed oil.

It ended up with a nice "antiquey" satiny finish, with just enough of the old imperfections showing through to keep some character

It looks nice to me, and hey, I'm the only one whose opinion matters, right?

Jon

PS: As for the crack, I used Elmer's brown carpenter's glue (the kind marketed for darker colors of wood). Seems to have worked okay