doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Treasures under the buttplates (Pics)

In the FWIW department, where I have wanted to add weight to a firearm using lead in the stock, I have first poured it into a length of copper tubing, making a very dense cylinder of whatever length provided the necessary weight. The cylinder was then fitted in a slightly oversided hole in the stock with a little bit of tape at each end so that it didn't rattle side to side, bt could still allow for stock shrinkage and expansion due to humidity. Then a little dense foam at the bottom of the hole or under the buttplate keeps it from rattling fore and aft. It is best if the foam is at the buttplate end of the hole with regards to damping the recoil.

In any event, the use of the copper tube seems to inhibit, if not flat-out prevent the swelling of the lead due to repeated impacts of recoil and/or oxidation.

YMMV

The Winchester M-12 heavy duck came from the factory with a lead plug in the butt.

I bought a like new Remington Model 11, 16 gauge, circa 1934 at a old pawn shop in Omaha Neb around 2004. I thought the gun was a 20 gauge A-5 when I spied it on the rack. Price? $250 because it was a Remmy and not a Browning. Happily took it home, the gun was perfectly clean except for some old caked on dirt on the butt plate screws. I took them off to clean and inside the butt stock was a hunting license from 1942...State of Montana..#95775, belonging to a Mr. T. Harold Welch, 105 Yellowstone Ave, Billings, MT.

It's still in the butt stock, placed in a ziplock bag for safe keeping.

Anyone here know this fella?? :-)

I have my grandfather's and great uncles' 97 Winchester with Montana hunting licenses dating to 1917. I'll never sell that gun and there are more licenses there now from many other states where I have hunted that gun.

Best thing I ever found was a piece of paper stating " This gun has been stolen from**********************************"!

I've posted this before on a similar thread. This Rem. M-10 belonged to my grandfather, then to my father, and then came to me. I found this 1918 Minnesota small game license under the buttplate -- the date is a few days before my dad was born.

Jay

GF, what a great tradition and family heirloom. Gil

^ fantastic.

Only ever found a penciled inscription which *might have been original to the guns manufacture.

Interesting things I have seen are exceptional stocks with serious figure only to find large voids checks and pithy inclusions - its the kind of stock blank which would get cut up for knife handles or something to day yet way back then it seemed they would go to serious lengths to carefully cut pieces to fill voids and cracks, just think its interesting.

The problem with highly figured stock is the grain runs in every direction. Sometimes the stocks don't dry well. Years of being in houses where the humidity is a lot lower and the temp.more controlled the stocks tend to dry out more than they were originally.I have a couple of my own guns that are fifty or more years old that have cracks under the butt plates and even in the cheek piece it's self. Rich