Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters creating a stock blank

I have a crazy idea about taking some of the birch I have growing on my quarter section and making blanks for rifle and possibly handgun stocks. A few questions before I go further.

What is the minimum diameter of tree to start with?

What would be the appropriate size for a standard rifle blank?

Other than avoiding the sap wood and the core what parts of wood should be avoided?

How long should the blanks be dried prior to beginning shaping? Assuming storing indoors and avoiding freezing temperatures. That being said can wood be dried outside where protected from rain and snow but exposed to freezing temperatures?

Other thoughts or input are welcome.

Thanks

GRF

I’ve worked up stocks from walnut before. I wanted a tree about 18” in diameter at a minimum. Slabs are sawn @ 3” in thickness to accommodate a cheekpiece if desired. About 2 1/2” if you don’t want a cheekpiece. The best figure in a walnut tree is in the taproot (stump figure) and the crotch where larger limbs branch off the main trunk ( crotch or feather crotch figure). It goes without saying, when I take a walnut tree, I bring a shovel and backhoe. The worst mistake you could make was to cut off at ground level. You’re leaving the best wood in the ground. We’d dig up the stump section, fell the tree and only then measure off eight or more feet in length before cutting. I’d sometimes get with the sawmill ahead of time and ask them what length they wanted the logs. I only dug up walnuts that were in the woods, never a yard tree, as the mill wouldn’t take it. The usual and customary length of time to cure was one year per inch of thickness of the slabs. Standard drying techniques were used. Inside a barn out of the rain, inch spacers between stacked slabs, ends of the slabs painted or paraffin sealed to prevent splitting.

All that being said, birch may or may not be any different from what I just said…..I’m sure there are more experts on here that can weigh in.

Thanks Godogs!

Anytime

GRF;
Good afternoon my friend, I hope that you and yours are well on this warm afternoon.

While I'm far from an expert, I have built a few stocks from a chunk of wood.

Without going out to the shop to measure the slabs of walnut in the tack room, I want to say that I'd like at least 2.25" wide and 2.5" would be better. I'd also prefer at least 8" height.

The hardwood suppliers we dealt with when I was in the cabinet and furniture making business never kept any wood inside out of the cold or heat. They're in a closed building but that's all.

Birch is okay to work with, though it's tough to get stained evenly - like maple it often stains a wee bit blotchy.

If you're ever passing through here and you've got some room, I'd be happy to hack off a chunk of the black walnut slabs I've had for decades now. I've given some slabs to a few folks over the years, have built a few more stocks and still have more than I will ever use in this lifetime.

Also if I can be of any use, please don't hesitate to give me a shout.

All the best.

Dwayne

The old Indian trick to staining birch: leather dye.

Thanks Dwayne!!


The idea of using birch is just to have something from my own land.

Birch is not strong enough nor stable enough to use for stocks, generally. I suspect from your location, you are looking at paper birch, which is the worst of the birches. Yellow birch is far better than paper, especially in stability.

For a rifle of modest recoil it is possible to do.

Drying birch is difficult because it dries quickly but not uniformly which leads to warping issues. Air drying is difficult to control. Most stock makers refuse to use kiln dried wood.

While birch may have plenty of figure it has very little "depth."

The best figure is often in the stump as you pointed out, but it is the buttresses leading down the trunk and out into the flat root portion of the root where the best blanks live. The actual tap root is usually quite vertical in walnuts and tapers quickly.

Thanks Sitka, I will try to determine what kind of birch we have.

It's paper birch that we have at the "farm", so less than ideal for gun stocks.

Thanks to all who have chipped in with advice and perspectives! Hope y'all have a wonderful day.

GRF

Paper birch is tough to deal with. Most of the yellow grows in Canada and a huge percentage of that has a French accent when the wind makes it whisper!

Sitka, our interior Alaska birch is some strong stuff. After that 3/4" of freezing rain bowed em over, very few broke over my dog training trails.

I milled some up for the top sides of a dump truck. Excavator dropped a massive quartz rock that hit the dump topside boards. Not a single crack.....

Making a stock requires a unique set of properties and few woods really compete with walnut. It is possible you found a tree with much denser and harder than normal wood, but it will still come in far short of walnut.

I remember back in the day shooting M-14’s, my favorite military rifle. Most times the stocks were walnut or God forbid, that plastic crap. Many times though my rifle wore a birch stock. Supposedly it was just as strong, if not stronger, than walnut. Occasionally I’d shoot an M-14 tricked out by the USAMTU and it wasn’t unusual to see a birch stock there as well.

Go figure

Your thinking birch but it's probably beech which is fairly common in military and commercial gunstocks.

Bingo

For the purpose of stocks (on a comparable density basis) there are few woods close walnut. Beech is quite strong but very unstable in use. Birch is not even close.

Oak fails because it splits readily.

Cherry is a little brittle.

Mesquite works, as do a couple maples, myrtle is good but hard to dry, and after that the pickings get slim.

Agree on all points….just know what more than one armorer told me. But, whatever it was, I preferred good ol walnut. Was told that they had less problems with birch moving once it was bedded. As you know, correctly bedding an M-14 or M-1a is a little more tricky than a 700.

Here ya go…..

https://www.fredsm14stocks.com/M14-Birch-Rifle-Stock-Presentation-grade-STB002.htm