Hi all,
I was looking for a black walnut (NOT western black walnut which it seems some people are calling claro) blank for a field grade gun, and wanted a straight grained blank similar to the original. I have purchased from Watt's Walnut before and found their blanks to be very good, but they had no wood that wasn't pretty figured. I found one place advertised somewhere that said it was all kiln-dried, but nothing else really...
Does anyone know of a source for good quality black walnut stock blanks?
Thanks
I'll bet Pete Hiatt can help you. Check the advertisers on this board.
Why would you go to the expense of making or having a stock made and use plain wood? I know some folks think field grade guns should not have nice wood. I like to look at figure in wood regardless of the engraving on the gun. But regardless of original wood, it is so expensive and/or time consuming to have a stock made, I don't understand doing it with "apple crate" wood.
RCC
The difference between restoring and customizing? Wood appropriate to the gun is a detail often missed.
No apple crates for me, I enjoy Eastern black walnut very much even in the plainer grades and I think it's very possible to find relatively unfigured wood that is plenty handsome enough to warrant my time, especially if you like a bit more subtle character...plus, the dense feathered wood at the butt of a longer stock makes it that much harder to balance a light gun the way I want. Unfortunately I'm having a hard time finding any for sale.
I had not considered Pete Hiatt, I thought being in Oregon he would not do much with Eastern wood. I'll drop him a line, thanks. If anyone else knows of any other good sources I'm all ears.
David,i have bought some off ebay several years ago. Bobby
I would contact the mass production suppliers like Calico Wood owned by Reagent Chemical or ShowMe gunstocks. Also, keep an eye to Ebay. Some comes up now and again.
David,
Is 8 quarter (2" thick) sufficient? If so how much do you want? I have a friend in the wood business in Jamestown, NY with maybe 10,000 board feet. I believe $50 for a piece long enough for any stock and forend is about what he would charge.
Bob Jurewicz
Look on Ebay. Several seller sell Eastern Black walnut for very reasonable money. I have bought a dozen plus blanks from there. Most is not kiln dried, but some is so be careful. I do not like kiln dried for stock work. Mine was green and I seasoned it in the wood rack. What ever you get you should test the moisture content to be sure. Better yet buy multiple blanks and let them season for later use.
One seller had a pallet of maybe a hundred plus, two piece, plain Black Walnut blanks he was trying to sell. All air dried for years, decades and ready to go. Worth sending an Email to him and see if he would sell you ten or twenty for a buy it now price. I have bought several items that way when the entire lot was too big to deal with and I wanted a fraction of the total. This was the item.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=250575837979This item has ended but I am sure that they would be happy to sell you some if that is what you are looking for.
http://stores.ebay.com/Wingo-Wood-and-Lumber-CompanyThis seller sells mostly fresh cut wood if you have the time to let it dry. I have bought several from him and the wood was better than the pictures showed. I by crotch Black Walnut from this seller, but he does have straight grain wood also.
Take a look at this. I'm sure these are old and probably have very little figure:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Gunstock-Blanks-Waln...=item53dfa9a118
For future projects, like 5-6 "air drying" years from now, you might check some local sawmills. I believe black walnut grows as far north as Vermont.
A couple years ago, I bought a full pick-up load of air dried black walnut slabs. The retiring mill owner also had a large quantity of gunstock blanks he had bandsawed out, but unfortunately he knew next to nothing about layout. The majority of these blanks had marvelous figure with grain running horribly wrong through the wrist or obliquely where it would meet the rear of a shotgun receiver. He couldn't understand why I chose large thick slabs over his pre-cut blanks. I spent a few hours digging through his piles of stickered slabs passing on many that would make a furniture maker ecstatic, but would not yield one good gunstock.
My truck load should easily yield 30 to 35 one and two peice blanks of mostly AA or AAA quality with a few even better. My cost was $310.00 and after bandsawing blanks, I also had a considerable amount of good scraps for repairs, handgun grips, etc. Naturally, I also had a lot of waste for the fireplace. I made plexiglas templates for rifle and shotgun that I could lay on a slab and find a stock with proper grain flow, good figure, and avoid insect damage, cracks, and bark inclusions.