doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com best thing to use for voids in your inletting.

need help on something.whats the best thing to use for voids in your inletting.to fill were you might take a little to much wood off.also to bed the tag area.i am using english walnut.i have tried wood putty ,but it doesnt seem hard enough.

Pawnbroker,

I would use Acraglas Gel from Brownells. It is plenty hard. I have used it to glass bed a couple of rifles, and to re-inforce the stock on a LC Smith. You also can dye it, or mix it with saw dust from the same stock to help it blend better. Hope this helps.

Ron

I use Acraglass or epoxy mixed with sawdust from the stock. Works well. You can use the dye, but I find the sawdust blends better most of the time.

Jim

When the professionals get little gaps, we almost never do, they can be filled with thin plane shavings and a dab wood glue.
Wet them, press flat, then trim and shape to fit.

SDH-MT is correct about the wood shavings. I have been asked to fix a lot of inletting goofs. Some of them may be filled with epoxy (ugly at best) or have wood inserted and then re-inletted.
The best process is still wood to metal fitting. Use a well matched piece of wood(it is best if you are using a piece of the same wood the stock is made from) and use wood glue as Steve mentioned. Wood glue dries with the least noticable line IF the wood is matched with grain and color.
Epoxy, super-glue, or poly-glue have always shown a glue line, for me. I learned early in my career this looks un-professional and clients do not usually accept it. Some people have said they have good results with "coloring" the epoxy to match the wood. I have used wood dust, coloring tints, different types of wood colors, multiple mixtures of colors, all to some degree of acceptance by the client but not up to the standards of the ACGG professional stockmaker of past or present. I am really good at hiding the repair with colormatching techniques used by furniture repair professionals. It is still not the same thing as making the gap disappear with good inletting techniques.
Now to the specific of your question....all of the above processes will work to fill the gaps. If you are aspiring to make the best quality job, you are going to have to learn the art of making your goofs blend seemlessly. Go slow, be patient, do not hurry, do not get mad at not getting it right the first time. Remember...Thomas Edison tried over 2900 times to make a light bulb. Mr. Edison remarked that he had learned 2900 ways NOT to make a light bulb, not that he had failed 2900 times. Perserverance will pay off and you will be proud of your work when you are done.

Dennis Earl Smith
The Stock Doctor
ACGG Regular Member

When and how not to inlet a stock is important. Never use a dull tool. You have more control over a razor sharp tool than you ever will with a dull tool. Never work when you are tired or not in the mood. Concentration is needed every second. Never work in less than great light. Never work when you do not have complete control over both the blank and the tool that you are using. Pros may be able to work with out thinking about what their next cut will do but I never can. Think in advance instead of figuring out what when wrong later.

I save everything when doing a stock job. All the trimmed ends, all the cutoffs, the shavings and even the sanding dust. You never know when you will find a void or screwup a minor area and need just the right piece of wood to fix the problem.

I found a nail in one blank that was almost finished when it broke through the final sanding stage. It took me several hours to remove the nail and make a patch for the area. After three more hours of work the repair became invisible. Even knowing where to look I could not see any repair. Luck was with me, but only because I had every scrap of wood to work with. I went over about a dozen possible candidates before I choose one. Having wood to work with is priceless. You can always throw it out later but it is hard to get it back or find the exactly right match from another blank. I used glue and compressed the fibers a little extra to have just a slight amount of wood to raise later to get the finish surface exactly right.

Glass bed along the side of an inlet job just looks like a fast repair job on a rough inlet job. Good repairs take a lot of time. I never see where tinting makes the seam go away. Some of the broken stock repairs, that I have seen, are almost impossible to believe that the stock was broken and some still look like the stock is broken.

Voids? What voids?