Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Strengthening forend

I'm pillar bedding and then glass bedding a rifle. I'm going to build tape up on the barrel and bed the channel so it's free floating.

It's a factory wood stock. I want to keep the forend from bending around so much. I've read about people milling in carbon or aluminum shafts and then bedding the channel. I'd imagine 3/4 of that is they are readily available for free.

Has anyone ever just laid in some carbon fiber fabric under the barrel? I'd imagine it'd work. The one big downside is that if I screw this all up, that isn't coming out....

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

Would help some but the stiffness really comes from the composite structure. Lay up carbon flat. Not so stiff. Take the same amount and lay it up as a box, foam or air core. Now you have something. You can see the same thing with paper rolled into a tube. I like carbon arrow shafts, already made up and I have a lifetime supply from repairing arrows for 4-H.

Nighthawk beat me to it. The tubular shape of the arrow shaft is inherently structurally strong; carbon fibre merely packages this strength in a very light material. As regards "I screw this all up, that isn't coming out.", that'll be equally true no matter which route you take!

Get the latest issue of Rifle magazine. There's a pretty good article in it that addresses this very subject. I'm not 100% in agreement with the author, but then again I rarely agree 100% with anybody- but he covers the basics pretty well.

I will have to look at that... who is the author?

Can't say for the current ones but when Browning introduced the BBR in the late 70's they had a piece of u-shaped aluminum channel inletted into the forearm.

Aluminum... the answer to the stock builder question no one should be asking...

I worked in the Browning Gunsmith Shop during the time the BBR was rolled out, I saw thousands of them.

Gil Sengel. Like I said, pretty fair article, but I got the feeling he isn't a pro in the strict sense of the word, but more a good reporter on the subject.

And I have seen a ton of broken/cracked fore ends on them. In late winter here it is ridiculously dry indoors and the aluminum does not give when the wood shrinks around it. Because the shrinking wood is not a uniform piece it shrinks around the aluminum and focuses the forces from the inside out to the inside corners... cracks happen...

Thank you, the name rings a bell.

Besides the aluminum channel in the forearm, the BBR was not a design I was very impressed with. Definately not a worthy successor to the Safari/Medalion/Olympian rifles which preceeded it. Kinda like Browning's post'64 in a way, how they've survived and even have a following is beyond me.

To be fair, the BPS, Buckmark, and Clitoris are good designs...

If the BPS were a good design why were they recalled shortly after introduction for trigger, safety and cracked stock issues. I repaired hundreds for these issues, modified the trigger mechanisms, cocking pieces and glassed the locking lugs they're just a mass produced tube action and not a very high quality one at that. You'd think that Browning aiming for the upper end of the sporting market could come up with something much better than that.

What pump shotgun isn’t a “mass produced tube action”? I’ve seen far less BPS problems than I have 870, Mossberg, and M12 problems.

Remington probably makes as many 870s in a day as Browning imports BPSs in a year...

I have quite a bit of experience with a number of BPSs over the last 25 years without issue... so maybe they got it right in the end?
😉

If the wood stock isn't stiff enough to hold shape, throw it away and get a decent piece of wood. I have never had an issue with the forearm of factory wood stocks being flimsy. Tupperware (injection molded stocks) that's a different matter.

If I needed to stiffen a forearm, the best way is to use a solid carbon fiber pultrusion rod bedded in epoxy with chopped glass added to thicken the epoxy.



All the fibers run the length of the rod so it has the maximum stiffness. I'd use at least a 3/8" diameter rod, 1/2" would be better.

An embedded rod or tube probably won't do as much for stiffening as will a layer of CF on the barrel channel (forming itself into a channel). But that would tend to cause problems when the wood shrinks and swells, while the CF does not.

I mistakenly typed BPS, the shotgun is a good design and not one requiring much in the way of repair. What I meant to post was the BBR the replacement for the Safari/Medallion/Olympian.