I have a Flues 1-1/2, 20ga that needs a new stock. Obviously it's not an expensive gun so I need to do as much as possible myself. Fitting a pad and grip cap, checkering and finishing are within my current capabilities.

My thought was to have a pattern that I prepare with good dimensions, duplicated, and do the rest myself, but I have never headed up a stock. Any advise, tool suggestions, things to watch out for, sequence of events etc..

TIA
Bill

Glass bed your pattern stock. Strip the action and start with the top tang. When you are about half way inlet begin looking at the bottom tang and working it as well. You do not want to get twisted inside the pattern. Apply your in letting black very lightly to avoid false marks. Good chiseled can be had on eBay very reasonably. Look for Addis or herring chiseled out of the UK.

A year or so ago I thought it would be fun to make a straight English-style stock for a 20 ga. Nitro Special. So I ordered an inexpensive semi-inletted butt stock. (I forget the supplier.) My biggest problem was cutting the pistol grip off so that everything would look right. With that solved I proceeded to make things fit (heading up?). It turned out pretty well and it was satisfying to accomplish.

My work experience is similar to yours, so I'd say your skills are more than sufficient to do the job. Just be patient, go slow, check fit often, and make sure you have really sharp tools.

I wouldn't waste money on any "custom" stock prep. I've worked with a number of "semi-inletted" stocks over the years without any serious problems and found them to be good value as long as you don't want fancy wood and have reasonable wood working skills.

R.

I'm not familiar with the flues Ithaca, but most boxlocks use the sloping face of the trigger boss to bring the wood and metal together under some tention. Be especially careful to get a good fit between these two surfaces.

I've done some Flues from GSI blanks. And another from a stick.

A Flues has nothing drawing it forward except draw boring.

Pitfalls include lack of parallelity in the stock tips that wedge behind the sides. And over cutting the mortices for the safety and hand pin.

When doing a Flues I over-dry the stock and remove the absolute minimum material from every area. It will swell after fitting And you can carefully remove material where it binds or obstructs
Conversely GSI's patterns may be cut too deep under the top strap and you end up having to fill in the mortices area.

So first its the stock horns, then the shoulders for parallel coming forward for stock to action back fit Then it's the downward inletting of the top strap for a tapered fit in the mortice.
Get any of that wrong ie not plumb or square, and the stock will be twisted to the action, leaving a shoulder high and the other below the action side.
From a raw blank there is much more latttude for elevation and squareness than a pretty machined blank.

I have 4-5 Flues to stock maybe we can work through one here
Though I caution, I am no expert. I've just turned some into sawdust is all.

Excellent info guys. That would be VERY cool CZ.

Maybe this thread will inspire others to save those low grade guns where the metal is still in good shape, but not worth the cost of a professional restock.

How about a short list of required chisel shapes.
My thoughts were:
1/8" flat
1/4" flat
1/2" flat
90 deg V
1/4 or 5/16 radius

Keep it coming!
If its like most of my projects, I'll do 20 times in my sleep before it's complete.

There are people that will nit pick the process, and truthfully IDC. Flues are common, stocks broken through the web even more so. A blank to try with is about $60.00

An armload of chisels, files, and scrapers is bout another $25

It's not the tools as much as it's the hands and eyes.

I hope that Ernie? The accomplished UK stocker and all around good fellow, will see this and bail us out when the water gets deep This is all for fun on a $100.00 skeet gun I've got laying around.

When I get home tomorrow, I'll try to take one apart and show where the problems always are.

I hope you go through with this, Ithaca, and keep us posted as you do. Don't be afraid to make a goof or two. They can always be corrected. Remember, you're doing this for your own pleasure so you can shoot that old Flues once in a while. I think you will have a lot of fun, albeit with a bit of frustration now and then, and a lot of experience.

Good Luck!! R.

R.
I have been in contact with a stock maker from the board who will duplicate my pattern. The pattern needs some comb work before I send it off. I'm also waiting to hear if he has a blank of the correct grade, or if I need to purchase one. If he doesn't have or want to provide one of his, I have one picked out.

This Flues has been a money pit but I really like it. 20ga, ejector, 28" damascus @ 5lbs 12oz..

Full speed ahead.

R.
I have been in contact with a stock maker from the board who will duplicate my pattern. The pattern needs some comb work before I send it off. I'm also waiting to hear if he has a blank of the correct grade, or if I need to purchase one. If he doesn't have or want to provide one of his, I have one picked out.

This Flues has been a money pit but I really like it. 20ga, ejector, 28" damascus @ 5lbs 12oz..

Full speed ahead.

Bill, Get you a several bent, flat edge, narrow chisels. I like small ones that I can put the end of the handle in the palm of my hand to push. They usually have a little pear shaped wooden handle, and are short. But, by bent I mean that the shank is bent in a slight, tight curve just behind the flat end. If you can't find any just carefully heat the shank of a straight one just behind the flattened end and bend it yourself, with the bevel on the cutting edge up, being careful not to get the cutting edge area hot enough to hurt the temper.

I find that I use these a great deal when inletting, for removing material from the bottom of a recess. Nothing else will do it as well, IMO.

Best, SRH

I have over a hundred chisels from years of wood carving and stock work. Funny thing is that I use maybe eight of them for 99% of my stock inlettning. Oh a few might come in handy in some odd situations but a basic group does almost everything. More than a large number of tools is being able to sharpen them to a razors edge and touching them up quickly while in use. Nothing cuts as well as a sharp edge or can ruin a job faster than working with dull tools and forcing harder to cut things because they are dull, then loosing control and screwing things up. Been there a done that.

A good vise, good light, magnification, comfortable seat if working sitting down, inleting black or soot and time to work without distractions of fatigue. I've screwed up stocks working too long, after I should have called it a day or night. Sometimes you are trying to bring three or four things together at the same times and don't want to stop. Sometimes you set a point you must finish before stopping. That's always a mistake for me. Work when you are fresh, keep your mind on the job or just put it down and do it anther day.

If you are smart you'll write down notes as you go. Problems encountered and methods used or missed to get around them. No matter how hard you try you will miss things the first time that you could do better if you did the job again. Notes help you do it easier and better. I have bought several project guns, in the exact same model, so that I can use the worse condition ones to learn with and save the best one for the final exam. Same for blanks, use plain ones to learn with and better one for the final.

Ky Jon: You sure hit the nail on the head!! Where were you when I was learning these things the hard way? It took me years just to learn to lay down the tools and walk away.

R/

oldr31, Most likely I was either crying over work ruined, tossing a stock into the fire wood pile or starting over. It would have helped if I did not find any job or re-stocking that requires glass bedding to fill in the over in-let areas to be in need of a match.

I love looking at other peoples work and seeing if they love glass bedding, gaps or did a job that I would be proud of. Problem is that it is tacky staring at their mistakes and there are a lot of them out there on some home done jobs and not so home made jobs. But most of us are armatures not a pro doing it every day for years at some factory. I expect the person who inlet Fox or Parkers had the job down to an art form and could do one in a tenth of the time we take. That comes with years of doing the same job over and over. We do one at a time and learn as we go. By the time you learn a few tricks it is time to take on another different challenge.

Jon, I would find it very helpful for me if you could please describe or post a photo of your most used chisels.
I want to make a practical & useful set for myself to get into stock work.
It seems that you can save me a lot of trial & error & wasted time. Thank you.
O.M

2nd request Jon. This would be extremely helpful.
Thanks,
Bill

Ithaca: Don't over-think it. Chisels are often sold in sets. Buy a set. Learn to sharpen them. You will use them all at first, but will gradually favor one over the other. They can be very expensive, so I suggest the mid-priced ones. I prefer the short shanks for careful handwork and the standard shank if I might use them with a hammer or a mallet. I'd suggest you visit a wood working store and stay away from the local hardware or big box outfit. The bent shanks appear attractive at first, but in reality, only have limited use. So I'd postpone their acquisition.

Personally, I enjoy going to local auctions and the occasional "yard sale". I've made some good buys at auctions and once in a great while at a yard sale where an old guy died and the widow had no idea of value.

As an aside: I just thought I knew how to create a sharp edge until I had to do careful work! It took me a while to learn how to create a really sharp edge. You might want to review your sharpening technique and equipment.

R.

That's why pictures can be so great. No one really wants to discuss mistakes, but seeing where folks got into a tough spot and how they worked through it are better, to me, than staged pro photos. I like to see glare on snapshots as I think it's maybe the only way to figure out how carefully surface prep was done.

Aside from the various chisels and maybe gouges, does anyone have a thought or two on handled scrapers?

I disagree. I use the tiny bent shank chisels a great deal.

I do agree on learning to sharpen them properly. Sharpness is of the utmost importance with inletting tools.

SRH

A couple bent chisels were used extensively inletting this lock 25 years ago. Sorry for having to use a link, but my photo bucket account isn't cooperating right now.

http://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbt...true#Post220495

SRH

My bit of advice would be done ever assume that any bolts are central or that any of the tangs are at 90 degrees to the action.

Once headed up prior to drilling any holes or fitting any small parts hook on the barrels and make sure there is plenty of meat in the blank to achieve your dimensions.

Take time prepping your blank getting everything square, if your bandsaw cuts ever so slightly off 90 degrees that can make quite a difference in weather or not the line of the rib runs down the middle of the blank.

Im a fan of using an oil lamp.





Sharpen your chisels the best you know how.

Small riffler files can be handy.

Trust your inletting medium - don't second guess it because your nearly always wrong.

In the second picture when your are adding parts i use a sash clamp to keep the action firmly in the blank.

Just a few things I would like to say on stock making. On this side of the pond partly machined gun stocks are not commonplace at all. Infact I have always made replacement stocks from an unshaped blank doing it the traditional way by fitting the action first to the head of roughly shaped stock blank. Doing it this way does give you some leeway in case things don’t start off according to the right plan. As I never made stocks on a regular basis I always tried to have a constant method I would use one initial thing I would always do would be put a centre datum line along top and bottom and butt of the blank. This line gives you a sight line helping to make sure you have let in the action squarely also helps in providing a start point for the cast on or off you may require.
The tools needed for shaping are purely a matter of what you feel comfortable with as for myself for most of the initial shaping work I preferred to use a draw knife, this is probably one of the oldest tools for wood working still in regular use today. It does have a lot going for it when you have mastered its use, firstly depending on the blades angle to the wood differing thicknesses of shavings can be removed with very little effort. On the down side is that you are working with a ten inch razor pulling it towards yourself and if you get things a wrong forgiveness is not one of this tools attributes, meaning it will cut you and in some cases very deeply indeed. With that said if you persevere to learn how to use one you will be surprised how many other wood working projects can be undertaken with this ancient of tools, in this modern world if it was not of any use its manufacture would be ceased many decades ago. I did see in one of those short films of a Holland stocker using a traditional draw knife because it cuts much cleaner than the mallet and chisel method, and if kept sharp reducing the need for a lot tedious smoothing of the wood later on. Also those two old wood working tools well by today’s standards they are, can be used for a lot of a stocks initial shaping these are the flat and round bottom spoke shaves.



In this first photograph at the top is the traditional draw knife below that is a flat bottomed spoke shave (red) and below that the round bottomed spoke shave (black). Starting from the left the first five are small gouges including a very small ’v’ and shallow half round gouge. Next to that a cabinet makers stiff bladed marking knife with a razor sharp edge, next with red and grey tape handles are two homemade small bladed cranked chisels one around cutting edge the other square for working the bottom of inlets. Following on are two shallow carving gouges half inch the other quarter inch ideal for forming drop points. The next two chisels are commercially made straight versions modified by heating and bending to make them cranked then re-tempering one round three eights cutting edge firmer type the other straight edged quarter inch bevel edged type. The last three chisels two are quarter and eighth inch bevel edged chisels and the other is an eighth inch firmer type. Finally is a curved cabinet makers scraper this tool is invaluable for scraping and smoothing areas of wood with tricky grain characteristics and of course general smoothing of internal curves. This is my basic set of wood working tools for stock shaping letting in lock’s action’s trigger guards and silver ovals.


In the second photograph are two examples of the large end of my chisel and gouge sets with an AA battery for scale at an inch and an inch and a half not much used in stock making. The bottom item is a “Trammel” sometimes known as a beam compass I use this a lot for marking distances from set points, you can also see there is also the capacity to fit a pencil. Finally there is a Brace and auger bits I use for stock hollowing and boring deep holes a lot slower than power tools and in consequence far slower to make a disaster of things. Can I say this Brace is not a carpenters or cabinet maker’s version it is in fact a Victorian fitters Brace used for turning large hole boring bits with having a metal handle can be “flogged” that is using a wooden mallet on the bow to make it turn. These braces where often found in boat builder’s yards and this example was made in Glasgow Scotland at the turn of the nineteenth Century and definitely made to last. Besides the mallet there is a soft faced well used hammer for taping metal parts without marking them, some large sticks of chalk and a Victorian engineers smoke lamp with snuffer which I use extensively for close wood to metal or metal to metal fitting, a word or too on this lamp which at the time was the pinnacle of its design. Firstly it can be used in any position including upside down without leaking fuel also the wick chimney is covered with a guard so you won’t burn your hand. All of that did not save it from being thrown away as being outdated until I rescued it from the bin, the chalk is used on the odd time lamp black is difficult to see on the pieces you are fitting. In the close up picture of the auger bits you will see that the centre one has a much coarser pilot screw thread, this is designed for boring along the wood’s end grain though now difficult to find.



The last picture is a “sash clamp” this was mentioned by another countryman of mine, so just in case its name did not travel over the pond this is what it looks like.
And finally I would just like to say keep all cutting tools razor sharp a better chance they won’t cut you. Measure twice and cut once. And the only tip I received from a professional stocker. “Stick to making stocks for box lock guns for the first five years for the practice.” Good advice! I have fitted new stocks on a number of side locks and each time I have said never again, each was not enjoyable because of the cost of the wood and the time taken.

Thank you damascus. Very nice set of pictures. I appreciate the first one the most, it's pretty clear to get an idea of offsets and bevel placements on the working end of your tools. Take care.

Damascus thanks for sharing your commonly used tools are pretty similar to mine, though I'm constantly looking for a good sooting lamp without success. I have had all kinds of oily leaking, knock over, awkward sized lamps which have been serviceable but the perfect lamp eludes me

This is what I use, but with kerosene or lamp oil. Not alcohol. It does not turn over easily, and if it gets knocked over it will "catch" itself on one of the flats, and not spill or cause any problem.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ALCOHOL-LAMP-GLASS-SPIRIT-LAMP-BURNER-FACETED-SIDES-ADJUSTABLE-WICK-WAX-WORK-/190517226263?hash=item2c5bb62b17:g:IzcAAOSwLVZVqFVE

SRH

Don't know why it won't link in blue, sorry.

I hope we are not detracting to much from the original post - but thank you Stan, its certainly better than my current one ill give it a go!

444,
Not detracting from anything. All input is appreciated.

This is certainly an interesting thread; and very educational as well. I for one obviously need to re-think my feelings about cranked chisels. I suspect it is because I have never used the smaller ones.

On a different, and I hope humorous note: It is interesting that no one has suggested using a Dremel Tool! Thank heavens.

R.

Before you worry about which tools learn how to sharpen tools to a razors sharpness without removing too much steel. If they can shave the hair off your arm with no tugging they will cut quicker, better and safer.

My basic list would include a Miller Falls 106 6 piece carving set or its equivalent. Ebay $25.00 I use three or maybe four of these at most. Small gouge, veneer, two of the skews.

Three flat bottom, bent dog leg skew chisels, one left, one right and one straight cut. EBay, Ramelson maker about 15.00 each

1/4", 1/2" wood chisels,

Draw knife. Cabinet makers half round and flat files. Round file and a few rifler files as well.

Pfeil 15/16 or 5/8 skew chisel, 7/14 shallow gouge, 1/2" bent flat straight chisel and gouge if you don't have the Miller Falls set. Veneer also.

pfeil Swiss made Undercutting Tools left, right and straight, same as full size set but sometimes comes in handy but in tight spots. They are just a smaller version of the dog leg chisels. $45.00

Number 6 and 10 chip carving knives.

Burnisher (Tringular) to compress wood fibers if you come across a soft area. It helps by compressing the wood so it cuts cleaner. I use it a lot on stocks with hidden and not so hidden burls. Burl can be very hard but the wood around it can be soft or even the reverse. Burls should be in the butt area not the grip but they do not listen to me.

Ca thin glue to help strengthen weak areas or soft areas. Not to be used where it shows as it can make finishing difficult.

Diamond whet stones (3) to touch up an edge quickly. Woodcraft DMT Mini Hone, Set of 3 $22.99

Leather strop.

Dead Blow Hammer.

Bessey Parallel Bar Clamp 24" F clamp will do as well.

Tormek sharpening system for proper resharpen when needed.

I listed 14-17 total chisels but doubt half of them get used much on most jobs.

Full disclaimer I have my own Gemni duplicator machine for my own use and don't duplicate all balks to the same level of in-letting. I find that dense, hard stocks are best almost completely inlet, to the maximum of my machines and my ability, which is 96-97%, while normal or softer stock blanks are duplicated to about 90-95% and fit up just as fast from there. The difference sounds small but it is not. A 90% inlet hard blank might as well not be inlet at all. Normal or soft stocks almost are like carving soap with razor sharp tools. Hard stocks are just that, harder to carve but they give you the best inlet job. For your pride and joy use hard, dense wood for a klunker user softer stuff.

The quality of the blank makes all the difference. I like hard, dense English or a nice Crotch Black Walnut as a rule. Hate Maple of all sorts. Circassian, Claro and Bastonge work well most of the time, depending on the blank. But I had a dense Bastonge walnut, with extreme curl in it that took ten times the normal working time to inlet from a 97% blank. It was like carving a wash board. Razor sharp tools only would cut it. Black Walnut inlets quickly, English and French cleanly, better than Black, but longer for me and Claro is in between depending on density and burl or curl grain.

If you make one mistake you might, might recover but after two you are nearing the wood pile fast. And if I had to make a living doing this I look like a Sudanese on a hunger strike. I admire anyone who can do this for a living. To do it well is very hard.

I agree about maple, curly in particular. I learned to inlet on m/ l rifles, which are customarily stocked in curly maple. I knew it was hard to do, but when you are just learning you don't really know any better. When I first put a chisel to a piece of average quality black walnut my jaw dropped, it cut so well.

SRH