doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com open pored blanks??

Hansli,
I can't answer completely but I am using it on cherry right now and while the wood is not yet finished, it looks like it will be very little or no effect. I would do the whole piece were I do to a stock but with more soaking up near the head where the recoil will matter most.

Perhaps Doug can tell us more about such things from a stockman's perspective.

Brent

David, I'll try to answer some of your questions with some qualifiers: If the wood is one of the American walnut varities which it looks like it, I have found this porous wood to generally be more brittle than smaller pored wood. This would make stocking the gun more difficult. Open pored wood is, as has been stated above, a lot harder to fill than small pored wood. Oh, and it checkers like dog doo doo.

IMHO, you're much better off buying a nice dense small pored blank to make a stock from and drill lightening hole in the butt if needed.

All walnuts are open pored wood. Maple and Myrtle are closed pore wood. Within the walnuts, some wood of any variety can be MORE open or closed pore. Just being more open pored doesn't mean this wood is soft. I am finishing a faily open pored piece of Claro right now which is the damnably hardest piece of any kind of walnut I have EVER worked. Many places I had to use a file instead of sandpaper. It has been cut out maybe 50 years and has tempered to amazing hardness and has cost me all kinds of time in finishing.
Now the ONLY advantage of English (Juglans Regia) is that it cuts so well. Black and Claro and Bastogne are rather chippy. English works much easier and cleaner. You can use larger cutting tools without the worry of chipping you get with the other walnuts. The other walnuts are often harder, but they are still chippy. Thus, English takes less time to finish. You have to fill all walnut pores (one way or another).