Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Glueing forearm on a Marlin Texan

I have a Marlin 336 texan with a cracked forearm. It is in two pieces longitudinal. What is a good glue and technique to fix it? Thanks, John

Angus1895;
Good morning to you sir, hopefully other than having a rifle to repair this finds you well.

On structural stock repairs like the one you're facing, over the last several years I've had very good success with G2 epoxy.



It has a very slow cure time and is the consistency of thick honey at room temperature when mixed.

If it were me doing your repair, I'd try to figure out a way to heat up the fore end - oven, hair dryer, etc. - before applying the G2 and then I'd wrap the fore end in stretch wrap to dry.

The theory behind this is that the air is forced out of the wood cells when one heats it up and then when one seals the wood with stretch wrap - as it the wood cools it sucks the viscous epoxy into the cell pores more effectively.

Since you're working with two pieces of wood now, I'd see if I could find a correctly sized Delrin, Nylon or UHMW rod for the magazine hole.

For the barrel channel if I couldn't lathe a Delrin rod down to match the barrel - I'd put a thin layer of electrician's tape on the barrel, coat it with release agent and glue the fore end up right on the rifle.

Again I'd use the Delrin rod in the tube magazine section though - and again I'd wrap the thing with stretch wrap to hold it together and seal it for the vacuum effect we talked about earlier. Be sure to use lots of release agent on the action too of course, but doing the repair either way shouldn't be too, too bad if you work your way through it methodically.

The preheating method is not my invention by the way, I learned it here from Art/Sitka Deer and it's worked flawlessly for me on a number of stock repairs.

Hopefully that was some use to you sir, good luck with your project whichever way you decide.

Dwayne

The heating of the wood will indeed promote the absorption of epoxy. But, IMO that is a trick best left to finishing applications. Heating epoxy will also shorten cure time, but at the expense of structural integrity. (This from factory reps who visited from time to time in our wooden boat shop.) Not a major concern when filling the surface pores when beginning a finishing job, but not so good when gluing two pieces together that are meant to stay together forever-and-ever, amen.

I have done a pile of repairs similar to what you describe by merely coating the surfaces with epoxy and clamping with rubber bands, then clean up any squeeze out. If the repaired surfaces are dead flush after clamping then the original interior dimensions have to be right too. If you feel it necessary to provide support in the barrel/tube channel(s), merely slather them up with release agent so the epoxy doesn't bond to them. But by leaving those spaces open you can in turn gain access to the glue joint for efficient squeeze out removal. Do a dry run before mixing the epoxy to get it down pat.

And what ever you do, don't glue it on the rifle...

toss it and fit a new forearm

Elmer's or Titebond Wood glue. Linseed when all the way dry, the real stuff that's not poison. Flax seed oil in the health food shop. Or just the wood glue.

I'd use Titebond 3, which is waterproof. The hard part is going to be to hold the two pieces together till the glue bonds. I'd lathe turn wood to match the size of the rifle barrel and magazine tube, but if you can't do that, then see if you can get dowels the right diameter. Then you can clamp the two pieces around the dowel. I'd use wooden Jorgenson clamps. Harbor Freight has cheap versions that work fine. Just be careful you don't glue the dowels to the forend.