Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Stock cross bolts, hardwood dowels or metal?

Sitka deer;
Good morning my cyber friend, I hope that you and your fine family are well as can be on this Monday.

Thanks for the additional information on the metal being added in, I want to say that lines up with what the mentor had told me back when.

Ironically - as an aside - a good and old friend and I were out calling coyotes yesterday morning and as two aging fellows will do, we were reminiscing about friends no longer with us. When the mentor/friend above came up, he was surprised when I told him that he was now older than our buddy was when he passed.

Funny how perspective on age, or better said what represents someone we think of as "old" changes when we get there ourselves somehow.

Anyways Sitka, back to your post, I suppose that's not totally different than JB Weld which contains 11% powdered steel so they say.

Adding powdered metal surely could make an epoxy blend tougher, I am not sure and have done no testing to prove to myself one way or the other.

Honestly I've not done any destructive tests with the Kevlar line in epoxy either to be clear.

I'm only going off of a lifetime of repairing and rebuilding all sorts of things from firearms, woodworking machinery, automotive and even plastic repair.

All the best and thanks again.

Dwayne

Dwayne. Good day to you. When more of your friends are under the sod rather on top, you know you are old.

A long time ago and far, far away I "glass" bedded an Interams Whitworth .375 in a ?Lee Six fiberglass and foam core stock using MarineTex epoxy IIRC and real fiberglass strands pulled from short pieces of fiberglass tape intended for boat repair. IIRC the glass strands were laid crosswise in the area to be bedded and the epoxy carefully applied over the strands. More strands were laid crosswise on top of the wet epoxy before setting the barreled action in the stock. Although the ?polyurethane foam core seemed very rigid, I was concerned that it would be compressed from the recoil lug beating against it's recess. This was my first attempt at resin bedding and it has held up well.

Not just any glass strands would be appropriate because laminating fiberglass is treated with a chemical to enhance "wetting out" as the resin...polyester, vinyl ester, or epoxy...is applied. Truth be known, just about any fiber that epoxy would adhere to would strengthen the application. The more fibers added, up to just short of the material failing to completely wet out, the stronger the fiber and resin combination will be. My aging memory cannot recall the glass treatment.

I've also used WEST (wood epoxy saturation technique) System epoxy...good stuff... mixed with their thickener agents to bed actions in wood stocks. WEST System epoxy is mixed 1:1 and has very low viscosity for a resin. It penetrates wood well and wets out fabric well. WEST offers two hardeners, one slow and one fast for working in cooler temperatures or quicker turn around.

I like to pull apart a piece of carbon fiber cloth with a coarse weave and lay the warp sections along the repair.

Well, after a lot of consideration of your posts on here and showing the stock to a very talented friend who is a magician with wood, I bedded it using grey Marine Tex and no cross bolt.

First, lightly scraped the interior of the stock using a razor sharp quarter-inch mortising chisel where the bedding would be. Next, gave the exterior of the stock, the barreled action, floor plate, and the stock bolts a good polish with Johnson’s Paste Wax for the release agent, and proceeded with the job.

Checked the stock bolts to be sure they would turn easily after two hours, turned them back in snug and put it to bed for the night. Popped it out in the morning to check, and there were no voids, no skim bedding needed. Put it back together for two days to be sure it was fully cured.

All pretty much ABC procedure, nothing new. Took it to the range for a test fire yesterday and all is well. Next trip to the range will be tomorrow.

This is will become my designated bison rifle and the forecast here is for -27C and colder the next few days. Typical weather that we hunt them in, so will let the ammo and rifle soak overnight in that before double checking the sights.

Will let you all know after checking velocity and accuracy at that temperature how everything goes.

Ted

Never did get out for Bison, but the rifle is shooting two inch groups with an old Pecar 1.5-5 variable on board.

That’s with a 290 Matrix bonded at just a tad over 2300 fps load for bison. Everything else will be using the 270gr Speer.

Thinking seriously about shortening the 24 inch barrel to 20.

Ted