Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles laminated vs walnut stock...

Guys please help me decide on a new Cooper varmint rifle, laminated vs walnut stock. According to specs both guns weigh the same.

Pros and cons for both...

I like laminated, but they seem very heavy compared to walnut.

I like the looks of walnut, but on a varmint rifle I would go with the laminate for the extra stability. The only exception would be if it is going to be a walking rifle where the lighter weight of walnut might be preferable.

I like everything about laminates except the weight. If weight isn't going to be an issue and the handles have checkering, give me the laminate. Like orion said, they are more stable. I will add that I have grown to dislike the stocks that lack checkering. Hot summers, sweaty mitts, and slick stocks are not the best combo.

Cooper says the laminate and walnut are the same weight.

Likely due to the vent holes under the barrel.

Is laminate less prone to scratches?

i dunno about that, laminates I believe are often of hardwood.... which really aint all that hard, ya know?

Go with the one you like the best apearance wise.

Being a stock maker I will take Walnut...Properly dried and cured European walnut is as stable as titanium..But factory wood is seldom cured and dried properly as that process takes too long and its too time consuming and expensive so in your case Laminate would probably be best or a good full length glass bed with I-beam aluminum stabilizers would work fine and give you the warmth and beauty of walnut..

Nothing beats a good looking piece of walnut but if you plan on it being a working rifle, I doubt the piece of wood is gonna be something that would have Ray drooling so I'd opt for the laminate. Especially if the weight is equal. The finish is just about impervious.

There is no reason to take a perfectly good piece of wood, cut it up, and glue it back together. A good piece of wood is dimensionally stable, and adding glue only adds weight.

So, what type of wood is cut up and glued together to make laminate? Wood that isn't perfectly good to start out with. The entire reason to laminate wood is so you can take wood that is somewhere between less than ideal, and borderline garbage, and make it useful as a stock, or a pen, or knife scales or whatever.

But, good wood is expensive. So laminating is a way to make stocks more affordable. But given the choice, go for the real deal.

just my opinion here:

pros of laminate
all things considered, less likely to "move" than walnut; usually has a "sturdier" finish than walnut

cons of laminate
looks are obvious; usually heavier than walnut

pro of walnut
usually quite better looking when compared to other stock types, clearly more of a "classic" stock; when properly bedded/sealed barrel channel, etc. does well enough in all climates

cons of walnut
does show dents and scratches (but may don't mind this), chips and splits are more likely than in other stock types

given a choice, i'd take walnut every time.

Anytime you want to debate the finer points of drying veneer compared to drying boards, let me know, I've done both profesionally for 5 years.

you are correct in stating that properly cured and dried walnut is rare. I've never dried it, but Larch 2x4's take forever in a kiln and even then you leave the outsides overdry and the inside 9% moisture at least... Walnut is denser, it would suck worse. I would imagine that if you wanted to properly kiln dry walnut 2x8's you'd need to run about 150 degrees in your kiln for about 10 days. You'd want to pull all the wood out every other day and switch the bottoms with the tops too.

Now Larch veneer is a whole nuther animal, you could consider it a 'soft hardwood' or 'hard softwood' (provided you're not mixing dry logs with logs fresh off a truck, and your green end made an effort to vat soak the logs for the same amount of time) denser veneers always dry more consistantly, with less warpage and shrinkage. I don't care how long and how "carefully" a chuck of walnut is dried, it will NEVER be as stable as Birch plywood.

But then I only dried 250,000 3/8% veneer 6 days a week for 3 years

If you really want to start an argument you'd lose we'll talk about the structural advantages of 3/4" Fir plywood compared to 3/4" Fir boards of equal size. You can't make grain in a tree run 90 degrees perpendicular every other fraction of an inch...

Dan
Having patented a drying process used in mills West of you for decades... and having a little more experience consulting on dry kilns for many times more board feet of hardwood than you have seen... You have some glaring gaps in your understanding of stock woods.

I have a number of sticks of walnut right here at the house which birch plywood cannot touch for strength, stability, toughness, hardness, nor especially, pretty.

But they never saw the inside of a kiln. Kilns do not make better wood, ever. They make acceptable wood with an acceptable level of degrade. You can screw up wood air drying or kiln drying. Speeding it up in a kiln is guaranteed to ruin some of it. Your comment on the difficulties in drying larch get right to the heart of the issue.

If laminates weigh less than walnut they have little advantage over typical kiln-dried factory walnut. Laminates usually weigh more than solid walnut because they are impregnated with a lot of glue during laminating. Glue prevents the exchange of water in use as the pores are already filled with plastic...

If I am going to use something as ugly as laminate I would rather go all the way and use a frigging plastic stock. Laminates make mopeds look cool...
art

Art, Admittedly I spent much less time drying wood on the kilns than I did drying veneer. Kilns are a piss poor way to dry anything, they both lack in production and quality (Probably why veneer isn't kiln dried)

However I'm straight up calling bullschitt on the fact that any board has a greater strength and stability than a wood of similar density that has been laminated. It is straight up impossible. You can't grow a tree where every other layer (lets say 1/12" thick) runs the grain 90 degrees to itself and is glued and pressed at 300PSI.

I can prove it... Take a karate geek... They can punch clean through four 1/2" Fir boards. If you gave them the exact same test with ONE 5 ply 1/2" Fir plywood, they'd break knuckles on it...

Now, I'll make your next argument for you... A piece of half inch 12x12" plywood weighs more than a Fir board the same size... BUT, the rifle manufacturers are still using walnut patterns to make laminated stocks. You can go a helluva lot skinnier all over a stock using a chunk of Birch plywood. Schitt, if they drilled out about half the buttstock before they put the pad on, the lamimated stock would break even... Oh, and be stiffer, and more stable

You clearly have never seen a good Turkish stick...

I can hand you a piece of crossgrain walnut less than 1/4" thick, 2"x6", and you cannot break it with your hands, nor even bend it. There is a reason good Turkish sells for thousands...

Your argument uses kiln-dried walnut against laminate and that is not any part of my argument.
art

The laminates were 'in' back in the 60's when I made up my target rifles. I selected the laminate walnut. Thinking back over it perhaps I was more confident in the laminate theory wise.

For sure I am glad I never asked Floyd Butler to make a stock from a laminate. He made such beautiful stocks.

Walnut stocks here; no plywood.
Plywood=fugly

I can't speak to walnut; the only wood-stocked guns I have are a Citori and a BLR.

I've generally avoided wood stocks because I see no practical advantage over laminate, in my climate (rain) especially, and my guns are practical tools. Not showpieces. If I wanted showpieces, however, I'd use walnut all the way as it is undeniably beautiful.

I own a few laminate stocked rifles. In our rainy climate it's that or synthetic (for me) because I have enough to worry about in my life already. I can get home from a day in the drizzle with a SOAKED rifle, lean it in the corner by the woodstove, and go to bed without a worry. Get up the next day and do it again.

Laminate does have a couple clear advantages over synthethics, and they are sound and smell. A lammie stock is much quieter in the thick stuff. And at least some synth stocks are really smelly.

I like the heft of laminate too. Solid. If shootin' the deer doesn't work, I can club them to death.

In a dryer climate and/or if I wanted purty guns I'd go walnut. It shares most of the advantages over plastic/synth that I mention above.

Art, please don't.

I have yet to see a wood stock as strong or as light and strong as the better synthetics. Try 18-19 ozs. ready to bolt up to the rifle. Full size classic patterns. Kevlar reinforced. Never have any of mine been noisy or smelled.
As far as laminates go, I'd prefer a stock, factory wood stock over the heavier laminates. By free floating the barrel, there are very few stability issues with plain walnut.
I wouldn't suggest you put that wet rifle up against that wood stove and ignore it very often. Even stainlees will rust if neglected enough. E

Too late E. There are already two threads by JO lamenting rusting stainless!

Folks talk about highly select walnut and it is some beautiful stuff but if you get the rifle too pretty, you wouldn't want to hunt with it.