I have an old Fox I’m restocking. I think I remember reading about coating the wood on the inside of the action with cyanoacrylate aka “Super Glue” to protect it from gun oil. Is my memory correct and if so does it work well?

Steve

I don't mean to take over a thread, but I'd like to know why when you take apart some old double, you never seem to find a trace of any finish on the vulnerable covered wood parts, under the butt plate or fore end, or on the head of the stock or the wood surrounding the action. I understand even back then, time was money, but you'd think a few gun makers would put some varnish or lacquer or boiled linseed oil to protect unseen wood.

And if they didn't protect those hidden wood surfaces back then, can we do any better today?

And should we?

This could be an interesting thread. Sorry if I butted in, but it's one of the mysteries of old double guns that's always fascinated me.

Steve, the gunmaker/stockmaker Paul Dressel used CA not only for sealing the inside of stocks but as a finish for the outside as well. I find it great for sealing and hardening the inlets but never tried the outside. As CA has a bad affect on my nose, I always use the odorless thin formula.

I'm not much interested in the old ways except design and style.

I used Goat Tuff on the inletting of a boxlock where a small crack was forming per the below. Not sure how it held up in the long run but I doubt it could hurt either.

http://www.lcsmith.org/faq/repaircracks.html

I have coated the inside of stocks with cyanoacrylate on a few guns I've had apart. Don't know if it prevented anything but it didn't hurt. You can apply too much though, especially on a gun with sidelocks. Then it's careful removal of the excess.

I use the thin CA formula almost exclusively in my model making and find that it penetrates the wood fibers extremely well, especially the end grain of the wood. The wood fibers become very hard and durable. Use caution because the thin suff can go where it's not wanted.
Karl

I like to thin two part epoxy with isopropel to the same viscosity as thin paint. It goes into the wood and sets up hard and strong.
bill

Thank you for your responses and insights regarding my question.

I’m doing the restocking for a friend and he was the one who inquired about coating the inside wood areas. It seemed like a good idea and my plan is to apply the cyanoacrylate after I’ve finished applying finish to the outside of the stock. Originally, I’d planned to leave the inside wood unfinished. My main concern is accidentally gluing things together with any excess cyanoacrylate left in the wood pores or on the wood surface. I also didn’t know that cyanoacrylate could be thinned, or thinned versions could be purchased, I’ll certainly go with the thinned version if I continue down this path.

Once again thank you all for your help.

Steve

Karl,

Do you have a brand and type you can recommend? I've searched for CA glues before and there are so many types its hard to know which is best.

I've used the super glue to effect small repairs, and some not-so-small cracks, to really great results. But as an overall sealer it seems excessive. Reinforcing weak areas seems like an excellent idea as well if they can be identified. For overall protection against oil penetration a couple coats of thinned spar varnish works just fine. I have stocks that I've sealed that way years ago that simply show new finish when the oil is wiped off. BTW BLO will not provide that protection against oil. AFA BLO is concerned the advice and data offered by Newell in his fine book, and by marshgurl (a noted antique restorer) here pretty much puts BLO in the BLOW category for anything.
Or course, use whatever you like. It's your gun

http://www.goattuffproducts.com/index.php?op=11 for tiny cracks

Ultra-low viscosity for wood impregnation
http://www.votawtool.com/insta-cure-super-glue-ultra-thin.html

Try MinWax Wood Haardener.

It is not CA,but works as well or better.

The glue I use is "Hot Stuff", designed to wick deep into the wood. It is available in a couple of different viscosity's.

Fallschirmjaeger,
I've used Hot Stuff years ago, although it isn't found much in my area anymore. The main brands I use are from Bob Smith Industries and Pacer Corp. They are most comonly found in hobby shops that cater to models. I use the medium formula for slower set-ups and some gap filling. The thin formula is used to join parts already in contact with each other and faster set-up and greater penetration. By fast, I mean instantly as the thin formula is instant. I've used the thin formula on end grained wood and to provide strength. On thin cracks it would penetrate very deeply for a good repair if needed.
Karl
http://www.bsi-inc.com/
https://www.zapglue.com/

I have used CPES (Clear Penetrating Epoxy Sealer) to protect wood. It can be applied for use under varnish and other finishes. It is primarily used in marine applications. Never tried CA based glues for wood preservation.

https://www.exoticblanks.com/E-Z-Bond-Thin-CA-5-CPS-Choose-a-size.html


I used a lot of CA glues when I was making pens on a lathe. You could reinforce woods which were so rotten that your fingernail could cut right through them. Soak the soft areas with a little CA and let it set for a minute. It gets hard as a rock then and you can cut it with sharp tools. CA comes in different thickness with CPS numbers to tell you the general thickness of the liquid. Thick ones penetrate poorly but fill larger gaps and are generally stronger but much slower to cure. The thinnest stuff I could find was this one above. CPS5 is much thinner than water and penetrates wood very well. Once it sets up it is very stable.

Beware it sets up quickly and is exothermic. Gets hot as it sets up to those with liberal arts degrees. If you squirt it on paper towels and throw them in a pile they can get so hot to become a fire hazard. Use in well ventilated areas and have safety glasses and latex or latex free gloves on your hands. If you get the CPS5 on your fingers you will instantly glue them together and give yourself a decent second degree or worse burn, if you get too much of it on them. This is so thin that it tends to splash droplets easily and just one drop near your eye will ruin your month. Also CA glue is a Cyanoacrylate compound and we know is not good for your health, so use in well ventilated areas. People do become very sensitive to using it and some become very ill if used poorly.

Hot Stuff is available from Brownell's and Connecticut Shotgun.
It is available in thin and gap filling. The thin is like water and will literally run through a crack in a stock and come out the other side. Best stuff I have ever used.

[quote=Rockdoc]Thank you for your responses and insights regarding my question.

I’m doing the restocking for a friend and he was the one who inquired about coating the inside wood areas. It seemed like a good idea and my plan is to apply the cyanoacrylate after I’ve finished applying finish to the outside of the stock. Originally, I’d planned to leave the inside wood unfinished. My main concern is accidentally gluing things together with any excess cyanoacrylate left in the wood pores or on the wood surface. I also didn’t know that cyanoacrylate could be thinned, or thinned versions could be purchased, I’ll certainly go with the thinned version if I continue down this path.

Once again thank you all for your help.

I would suggest you seal the inletting with cyanoacrylate BEFORE you do stock finishing as an accidental spill on your newly finished stock would not be fun to fix.

I have always sealed the inletted areas on gunstocks I have made with shellac, but I don't see where CA could hurt. Shellac's a lot cheaper for sealing, if sealing is the only concern.

SRH

Stan's comment above is something I've wondered and dealt with for too many years to tell. I mean, why would a person after spending either or both untold hours and dollars on some primo piece of wood and stock production want to save a couple insignificant bucks on something like cheeeeper sealer for something as long-term important as sealing? Personally I've found the scrooge urge very difficult to overcome and have to constantly remind myself that life is too short to get wound up about such stupid things. And that the dollars I leave behind will just be pissed away by someone else anyway hahaha
JMO of course - - feel free to pinch the pennies

Another consideration might be to coat it with something the friend likes or heard about, as long as the stock maker isn't overly opposed to it. Real or perceived, the customer is likely to feel better about it.

My use of shellac is not in order to save money. I only mentioned the difference in cost as an afterthought. My gunsmithing mentor used shellac and recommended it to me. I have never found a fault with it. If you can prove to me that cyanoacrylate is superior to shellac for sealing insetted areas I will certainly change gears.

Can you?

SRH

I'll say it one more time, MinWax wood hardener is easier, and perhaps a bit better at penetrating and sealing than CA. It does have a nasty volatile solvent however.

If protection from gun oil is the only goal, then the crazy glues, varnishes, etc. will all work OK. But if we want to also repair or prevent cracking and splitting in the stock head or inletting, I still prefer a good penetrating epoxy for this type of work. Cyanoacrylate glue is very strong in tension, but not very strong in shear. Remember the guy on the TV commercials who hung from his hard hat after gluing it to an overhead I-beam with a drop of Crazy Glue? If you smacked it sideways, it would have snapped right off. I have no doubt that it will help stabilize soft punky wood and also repair small cracks, but it is more brittle than wood stabilized or repaired with epoxy. The same can be said for the polycarbonate wood stabilizers such as Minwax Wood Hardener. It may be fine for doing a repair on a rotted door frame or window sill, but a good penetrating epoxy will outperform it for sealing and providing strength under the pounding and twisting forces generated in a gun stock under recoil.

You'd also have to be pretty damn slow to ever glue your fingers together with an epoxy. But that may be why Ed Good hasn't made a reply. Any of these products can and will interfere with the penetration of stain and stock finishes, so care must be taken to keep any off of exterior surfaces during application.

keith, I helped my son repair deteriorated stringers which support the motor mounts for the 454 c.i. inboard engine in his 23' Baja Hammer last summer. Though it was "runnier" than any other epoxy I had ever handled I don't feel it would have soaked into the end grain in a hard walnut gunstock's inletting. Is there some other type that would be even thinner, and that would penetrate better?

What we used was a West Marine product, and we bought a full gallon can of the resin, plus the hardener. If I can depict this scenario, his boat has two stringers that run fore and aft and the engine mounts sit on them. They are wood underneath, but covered with the interior bottom finish of fiberglass. The repeated torquing of the engine had loosened the bolts that go down through the mount, through the fiberglass, and into the stringer .....and the resulting looseness had allowed water to get down and around the bolts, rotting a big pocket in the stringer underneath the fiberglass. We just poured the epoxy down into the bolt hole until it wouldn't take any more, then pushed the bolt down into it, allowing the epoxy to cure with the bolt in place. The only alternative repair was so expensive as to have been not even an option.

https://www.westmarine.com/buy/west-marine--penetrating-epoxy--P015023724

It is described as super-thin, but I have to say ........... only compared to regular epoxy. I think the reason cyanoacrylate is so popular for sealing and stabilizing inletted areas is that there is practically no buildup, that would require further inletting. I can see the penetrating epoxy being great for a bedding type situation. But, it would seem to me to leave a buildup on the surface that would have to be removed to re-inlet the lock, or tang, etc. Am I not understanding how you use it?

Thanks, SRH

Keith, I've always been a big fan of epoxy ever since I was a kid and "5-ported" the engine on my go-kart using epoxy to glue in the extra engine ports I added to the 2 cycle Clinton engine that powered my go-kart. What type of extra thin epoxy do you recommend? Or is there a thinner I can add to the regular epoxy I already have.

BTW I remember that crazy glue commercial and figured that the joint was made up of two jo blocks glued together.

Stan, I've also used the West System epoxy and agree that the viscosity of the unthinned product would be too thick to penetrate very deep into dense end grain. It would also build up on the surface which could interfere with fit of sidelocks and other furniture. But as Bill Schodlatz has pointed out, epoxy can be thinned with solvents. The viscosity of epoxy can also be reduced by heat. Warming the wood is best because warming the epoxy will reduce pot life and cure time, but you can warm the epoxy just prior to brushing it into the wood. There are always trade-offs when you thin epoxy or any glue with a solvent, and this includes cyanoacrylates. For epoxy, acetone or lacquer thinner is better than denatured alcohol because it is more volatile and less likely to get trapped within the cured product.

One of the trade-offs of thinning is a reduction in strength and an increase in porosity. There are no magic bullets and no product is going to make punky or rotted wood as strong as it was originally. Even thicker layers of epoxy as is sometimes used in glass bedding is flexible. And the rotted motor mount stringers in your sons boat would not be as strong as original wood unless you added layers of fiberglass cloth to reinforce the repair. And this all takes us back to the recent thread on solvent soaks to remove old accumulations of oil. We are fooling ourselves if we think we can soak walnut in harsh organic solvents without affecting the strength of our gunstocks. We may be able to stabilize the depleted wood with cyanoacrylate glue or epoxy. But it will never be as good as new sound wood.

Stan-
My comment was one of a general nature. As for cheapazz - I mentioned that I used thinned spar varnish to seal. Hardly the big$ item and seems to be more than adequate. I do admit that I've never been a fan of shellac for anything simply as a consequence of why bother with something different, but WTF do I know having never used it. I also have used the super glue to fix small cracks and was happy with that. And it seems to me that treating the head of a SxS with some kinda hardener is a good idea. I may even use it to soak the recoil areas if I refin another Perazzi or Beretta stock.
But all I'm saying is that some miniscule price difference will no longer be the deciding factor

Be Safe
Charlie

Rockdoc, I've used regular Acraglas epoxy, West System, and numerous other brands. I usually use lacquer thinner and/or a heat gun when I wish to thin my epoxy. No more than 10% thinner, and don't overheat the epoxy to the point of smoking or you will really weaken it. Hot epoxy also sets up much faster, and you could lose your batch if it kicks over before you get it in place. I know that Brownell's simply repackages a good quality commercial epoxy, so there are places to get the good stuff much cheaper, and in larger quantities than buying those expensive little jars of Acraglas. One source I found for very good cycloaliphilic epoxies is Progressive Epoxy Polymers,Inc. Their website is www.epoxyproducts.com
The guy who runs it is a very good source of information on different types of epoxy, fillers, etc. You will learn a lot you didn't know if you navigate through the website. I'm also still using what's left of about 15 gallons of commercial epoxy and hardener that I bought at the liquidation auction of a local fiberglass boat builder about 20 years ago. I used several gallons to fiberglass a sailboat hull and many other projects and repairs. I have no idea what the shelf life is supposed to be, but it still seems perfectly good.

The thoughts are with epoxies which I generally agree with, but I have used this product and am pleasantly surprised by the results. For nonstructural sealing, I think a quality ultra thin CA has the edge in wicking end grain penetration. Plus, the needle tip is very convenient for occasional use with minimal worry of misapplying. I checked a few hand tool handles that I soaked in the wood hardener about ten or twelve years ago and they have held up well, minimal dents, swelling or shrinkage at metal connections and no end grain checking.

I recall completely submersing them for a few days, there was a ring of penetration, but certainly not through and through. Plenty enough though, I stood a couple of them half in water and didn't get swelling that I could measure after a couple of days. All and all a good product that's easy to come if it fits the bill for the job at hand.