Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Repairing a Rem Nylon stock

I've got a Remington Nylon 12 rifle that has a crack in the forearm. Remington service manual calls for Phenol to weld the nylon back together. Does anyone have any idea on a source for Phenol in the proper strengh or what the proper strength would be? Phenol is carbolic acid, but there are many different mole wts.

Does anyone have an alternate method for sticking nylon together or repairing the stock?

Try contacting these folks.

http://www2.dupont.com/Plastics/en_US/Products/Zytel/Zytel.html

I thought all those stocks were guaranteed for life???

I guess they didn't figure they'd live this long. I own a 1963 Nylon 66. Great little rifle!

Stock can be repaired using Marine Tex.
Can be procured at any boat supply store. Stuff is used buy smoe gunsmiths to bed stocks and make different repairs. Real tuff stuff!

Sitka, you may have a point about the guaranteed for life. Now that you mention it, I think I remember that promise too! Wouldn't hurt to ask I guess.

Malm you are right about them being great little guns. I've have a black and brown from the 60's and love to shoot them. I'm still looking for a Nylon 66 in Seneca Green I can afford, seems I'm never in the right place at the right time. This Nylon 12 came to me pretty cheap since it had the crack in the stock. It still shoots great.

That Marine Tex may work to put some extra strength in the repaired area if it will stick to the zytel nylon. Nothing else seems too!

Damn.... Someone finally broke one....

Like busting an anvil with a rubber mallet; theoretically possible; practically impossible, but someone, somewhere will manage it.

Breaking one is probably a No-Brainer for your average 10 year old boy...

...when my youngest was 6 he broke both (different times) inside door handle mechanisms on my truck trying to open them...not understanding the concept of door-locks.

No problem for some supposed adults either. Some people prefer to beat a wounded rabbit to death with the gun rather than fire another shot. I also had to send in a 870 barrel to have it re-soldered back together after my neighbor tried to beat a raccoon with it.

One broken stock that I replaced was caused when a fellow heard something on his front porch. He grabbed an unloaded rifle and stepped out onto a very mad badger. Besides a new stock, that one cost him a complete series of rabbies shots. It may have been a good thing the gun wasn't loaded, he said he got so excited he would most likely have shot his foot off.

I saw one recently at a Gander Mountain that was cracked near the end of the forearm and had to wonder if age was a factor.

Geeeezzzz! I would have to be totally bonkers or in a life and death struggle before I'd ever consider using one of my firearms as a club.

Wouldn't surprise me. I know a guy who chased down a wounded goose instead of shooting it again. He beat the goose with the barrel of his model 12 until it died and bent the barrel. He said it probably wouldn't have bent if he had a vent rib to provide added strength to the barrel. I tried hard to keep from smirking.

Interesting question, I don't know of anything readily available that reliably bonds nylon to nylon with good strength. Found This .pdf from Du Pont. Describes a bonding adhesive made of Zytel, calcium chloride and ethanol after talking about phenol adhesives, and how to make it, down about page 113. All I know is what I read, so you get to lead us all if you wish.

----------------

Also found This company which claims their adhesive will bond all sorts of "unbondable" plastics including Zytel. There's a page there that says it will work on Remington nylon stocks but not internal parts, glued part not up to original strength I imagine. Didn't follow it through so you get to research the product, looks like you can order small quantities direct.

Nighthawk, that .pdf is exactly the information I was looking for. Doesn't look like it is a simple fix, but it can be done.

One good thing is the Nylon 12 is a lot easier to totally strip and put back together as opposed to the Nylon 66 models.

On the subject of abusing guns.... A hunting buddy told me of and early Colt handgun he had inherited from a distant uncle. He said it looked like it had been used to hammer in a few fence staples. I was over a month or so ago, and he brought it out. Indeed it looked like he had used it to build 20 miles of fence and had no other tools along. A real shame.

Try this. If that stock has a buttplate that can be removed, do so. Take a Q-tip dampen with acetone. Touch to a small area on the inside of the buttstock. Check to see if the area gets gummy. If it does, apply a dab of Marine Tex. See if it adheres to the nylon. If it does, do the same to the damaged area. Make the repair from the inside of the stock. Let dry 24 hrs. Sand as needed.

I was thinking similar things only using fiberglass cloth and resin, reinforcing it from the inside.

I wouldn't bet on it holding very well.

Nylon (Zytel is a (usually glass) reinforced polyamide), polyethylene, polypropylene, PTFE (Teflon) and other polymer plastics ("shiny plastics") don't stick well to epoxies or cyanoacrylates because of the molecular makeup of the plastic polymer. I don't understand why well enough to say more, but none of the common stuff that I've tried gives more than a pretty weak surface bond. In fact I've used polyethylene sheet over epoxy/glass layups and it peels off easily. Plastic food wrap (polyethylene) can be handy when bedding.

The phenol adhesive the OP was talking about forms a solvent bond. The system in the second link, best I can tell, modifies the polymer molecule so it will bond with an adhesive.

I used to make this adhesive when I worked at Square D Co. as Materials Engineer. Although I worked in the engineering lab, the adhesive was used on the production line (limit switches, if I remember correctly). The procedure was fairly simple: Take a quantity of Nylon 6/6 shavings and immerse them in a solution of ethanol and calcium chloride. Stir the whole mess at room temp. for a while (several hours at least) until the shavings dissolve. The result is a syrup which is a fairly good adhesive for nylon. At the time, there wasn't anything else suitable for nylon (mid-80s).

My 1960-dated Nylon 66 has a very fine crack from the sear pin hole that goes up to the edge of the receiver. I tried a newfangled product and worked extensively with the vendor--it worked as advertised until I actually shot the thing. Then the vibrations shook it loose.

I wish there was a product akin to model airplane glue that actually melts the plastic a little and then hardens