doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Wood for a gun ston and forearm

I am chimney sweep . At one of my customers yesterday. She had just gotten a load of black walnut. There where some beautiful burreled pieces there. She was nice enough to give me the pieces I was drooling over. NOW, the big question is. Are these blanks large enough to even be considered for a project gun? The pieces I found are 12x16 and 12x12 both 2 1/4 and a piece 2 1/2 x3x17. or am I just dreaming and these are nothing but firewood. I'm thinking they seem a bit small. Thanks to anyone that can help me.

OF course that is stock not ston

Probably what is going to happen is that your wood will crack and revert back into fire wood. If you cut a live tree down and save the crotch to use for gunstocks you should coat the end grain with tar or some other material that will allow the moisture to slowly evaporate thrue the bark. You don't want to cut the log untill it stabalizes which should be a few years. You should store it out of the sun in a shed. I don't know how the commercial wood suppliers do it but that is how it can be done the homemade way since you don't have the equiptment that they have. After the log sits a few years and you think that it has stabilized you can use a chain saw to cut rough blocks and slabs out of the crotch then later they can be planed to size. Knowing where the best piece of wood is in the log is probably some art,some skill,and some luck. I know it always brings a tear to my eye to see an old black walnut tree cut up for fire wood. Wood quality of black walnut varies thrue out the country for quality and suitability for gunstocks. New Jersey can produce some nice quality gunstock wood. If the tree grows where it is moist and is able to grow fast the wood will be open grained and fiberous and won't checker well. Where I live the soil is sandy and the trees can grow slow producing dense wood.

It sounds like I have fire wood. I was going to coat the ends with wax. I'll probably still do that. But I was wondering about the cracking.

Even with the ends coated in wax, paint, etc., it is still a crap shoot that it won't crack. Air drying they say is the best, rule of thumb is usually 1 year per inch thickness of wood. Most stock blanks are dried a lot longer.
Coating the ends of the wood any wood is to stop the wood from drying out too fast and keeping the wood in a dry place will help in the drying process also.
If there are cracks in the wood already, coating the ends might help, but like I stated earlier it's a crap shoot. It's always best to have the wood quite a bit longer and wider than needed for this reason. People doing this for a business can't afford to do this because of the waste of wood, but for you it's fine.
6-8% moisture content is what you are looking for, any good lumber supplier should have a moisture meter and would probably check it for you. Good luck.

Sweep,
Do all the right things to properly dry the wood. Meanwhile, learn more about proper grain layout. If the blank ends up cracking or the grain layout is not acceptable, save the wood for forends, gripcaps, buttplates, grips for a pistol, etc.

YOu can not go wrong with free wood. Cover all the ends in wax and cover all the fancy grain with wax as well. You want the moisture escaping in areas other than the ends or fancy grain areas as they will crack if they dry too fast. Place the wood in an area that does not get rapid air movement or heat. Alllow the wood to dry as slowly as you can. Sticker it, place small wood peices under it so air gets to all sides. Another trick is to put a screw hook in one end and hand it up like we use to hang up bacon to dry.

Slow and steady is the trick. You want to pull out the moisture very gradually. Fast will crack it for sure. I have covered extremely fancy balnks on all six sides for a year to slow the drying process to a crawl. Heavy on the ends, less heavy on the sides, except over the fancy grain and those I covered very heavily. Then scraped most the wax off the sides for a year or two and then scrape all the rest off and let it dry for two years. I dried two crotch walnut blanks that way that are extremely fancy with no cracks. My buddy took the other crotch blanks and just covered the ends and a little over the crotch figure. He is not the most patient person so I do not think he took very good care of his wood while it dried. His burned nicely in the fireplace.