Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats Rescuing a stock blank

I was visiting family in southern Utah and took a day to drive to Las Vegas to visit Cecil Fredi and look at his inventory of stock blanks. If you are ever in Vegas, add a half day to your trip and go see him: "I tell people I have 30,000 blanks, but I know it is way more than that."

I came home with a couple, one being an English blank he priced at $800.







So how much "rescuing" can an $800 blank possibly need? That depends on how it aged in the 25 years since it was cut.



Yep, that is every bit of an inch of warp.



The only possible solution is to cut it in half and use it as a two piece blank. My father has a Winchester 1885 hiwall that could really use a better stock. The diagonal line in the photo below is where you would cut it for that application.



Needless to say, I paid way way less than $800 for the blank.

I bought several shotgun blanks from Mr Fredi. They turned out great. Paid $500 each but that was 15 years ago.

That is such a great blank, I think I would be tempted to try to straighten it out somehow- possibly with steam and clamp it straight while it dries. Or see if with careful layout you could possibly squeeze a stock out of the blank with careful cutting. There would always be the fear of it rewarping, I guess but I wouldn't be in any hurry to cut up such an outstanding blank until I had considered every possibility.....

Bob

It is a pretty thin blank, so a rifle with a cheekpiece would have be tightish even if it were straight.

Guns with two piece stocks need good wood, too.

That's a beautiful piece of wood. I love how the grain flows through the "grip" area.

Very nice piece of wood. As we have discussed off line, wood is a natural thing. And it moves. Sometimes a lot.

A two piece stock is the easy answer. Or, potentially multiple thin vertical cuts on a band saw following current contour, glue them back together in a press forcing them flat till cured. Maybe 4 to 6 laminations? Possibly include a center lamination of a straight grained piece of walnut to act as a "spine". Similar to Serengeti stock process.

Yeah, you're probably right. When it comes to wood I perk right up for English walnut and especially pieces with strong mineral streaks like that one has. Shame really, but I'm sure whatever it ends up on will look amazing and cutting it into two pieces will eliminate the chance of further warping in the future....

Hope you show the finished product...

Bob

beautiful blank, your fathers Winchester will look spectacular.

Could you manage 2 English style stocks and forearms from that blank?

Looks like it could be possible but hard to tell from the pic. The drawing on it distracts my eye..

Mike

Beauty! Looking forward to seeing how it comes out.

Did he invite you inside his house? I was last there 15 years ago and he had the most impressive mounts I had ever seen. Lots of complete, whole-animal mounts - African and American big game. Hell of a man and a super nice guy to match. I bought a couple of blanks, and after talking about a rifle I was building for my daughter, he gave me - rather her - a beautiful, blonde Bastogne blank. Not many like that anymore.

Serengetty style laminate or the two piece route seem like the way to go.I keep looking at how to use the cast on for a cheek less left handed rifle but it is not happening.

The advantage of the Serengetty laminate is you could book match the "A" side if you wanted too, that is also good for rigidity to have opposing grain structure. But a two piece will be a beauty. You did better than if you had played the slot machines instead.

If you are right-handed, let it set awhile and see what happens. Right now you have great cast-off!

Also, if one plans to build in some "cast off," that warp might be to ones benefit. Put in about 1/2" of cast off and a 1/4" toe in on my last build. Instinctive pointing puts it right where one would want it.

I always wonder where to read about building a rifle the way they build high end shot guns, so they "point"

There are several good books on stockmaking that explain just about everything about the process. Linden, Kennedy, and Westbrook all put out good books on how to accomplish the task. However, as I've found out over the years they will only take you so far. You have to figure out much of it yourself by doing, making mistakes or just missing the mark by a little bit, and adjusting the "next one" each time until you get it right. Those old masters weren't getting rich by any means but they produced an awful lot of stocks while they were around...

Bob

Not an expert here,but have made a few stocks and worked quite a bit with wood..The warping is internal stress in the wood.I would think that once you start cutting a barrel channel in and thinning the wood, the wood could continue to warp in the same direction. Big chance to take on a high dollar piece of wood and a lot of labor hours .
I have been successful in running thick 3"+ wood thru a jointer and then a planer to straighten some wood out, but it is hit or miss venture.JMHO though

Probably right Saddlesore it could get worse. I am amazed at how the old time ship wrights could look at a keel log then free hand a curved line on it and after cutting it would be straight.

Took a couple pictures while sawing some walnut this afternoon. 10 ft walnut log. Customer wanted 8" flitches (boards), 5/16" thick. After air drying, he will plane to 1/4" thickness and laminate together for custom gun stock blanks.

After I got the cant squared up, I started taking 5/16" flitches off the top. Notice in the first picture that the flitches are staggered to the right. This is due to tension in the wood pulling/bending each flitch to the right before the saw completes the cut at the far end of the cant. This is a horizontal bandsaw with the band blade moving right to left. So the tension in the wood is actually bending the flitch into the path of the saw blade. This is frequently caused when a tree grows on side hill. Normally, the wood will pull toward what used to be the uphill side of the tree.



After I pulled the first 6 flitches off the cant, I kept sawing with no changes to the cant. Notice that after I pass the center of the cant (the pith), the tension starts pulling the flitches to the left. subtly at first, and then more aggressively the deeper I get into the cant.



Not as dramatic as the bow in Utah's blank. But, a good example that you really don't know how a piece of wood is going to react when you start working with it. Even when starting off with a relatively straight log with straight grained wood.

Thanks for those photos. We ought never forget how "alive" wood is. Once I am 100% sure what project will receive this blank, I figure that I will bandsaw it to shape and let it sit for maybe a year. That will free it up to walk as much as it is reasonably going to in the short term. I would be surprised if it did not move some.

Years and years ago I left Montana to go to school in North Carolina, and took my Rem 700 BDL in the factory wood stock. After I got there, and the stock soaked up the NC humidity, its 100 yard point of impact shifted about a foot. I put it in a very early Brown Precision stock and my serious hunting rifles have always worn African walnut after that.

I love the look of wood, but it is never dead stable.