Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Stock crack repair advise

I have a Remington 141 with a common crack at the stock head/pistol grip where it contacts the receiver. It's pretty solid but I can squeeze it together some with finger pressure. The hole serves no purpose on the rifle, I think they were used to locate the stock during shaping, so filling them wouldn't cause a problem. My thought is to force some epoxy down the hole into the crack with a cut off toothpick, and/or a little air pressure, to get it as far into it as possible, assembling to the receiver and lightly clamping the crack together. Any advise from the stock gurus here? Different glue, flushing the crack with cleaner of some sort, or?? I'm all ears.....TIA

Degrease the crack as best you can. Rather than epoxy, I use glue. Titebond II or III.

I would make a couple of tiny wedges out of hardwood and gently open the crack a little more.
Then I'd use a good epoxy (I prefer slow cure) and sweat it into the crack with a hair dryer.
If you're in a cold room, pre-heat the wood.
Epoxy will sweat into a crack just like plumber's solder into a pipe joint.
Then clamp it, wipe off any excess and let it set for the recommended cure time.

I just did a Rem 14 1/2 stock with the same issues. Q tip with alcohol to degrease the holes (the holes on my stock are pretty shallow). A very small amount of Gorilla Glue (the glue will expand as it cures) applied with a toothpick around the inside of the hole and opened the crack up a little bit by hand to allow a little glue get in the crack and then wrapped a couple thick rubber bands around the head of the stock and let it cure for a day. Whole operation took 10 minutes or so and the stock is now very stable.

I would clamp it and then carefully expand the hole with a drill bit or round file. The closer you can get the fill to the outer surface, the stronger the repair and less likely for the crack to become visible with changes in moisture. Will be easier to apply the epoxy too. Fill with the clamp removed, and then clamp again until cured.

Always a good idea to check the inletting to identify and correct any issues that may have caused the crack.

To do it right,
1. clean the entire stock off with acetone, using a wet non dyed shop rag, get all of the oil out of the wood.
2. Then with a long snout syringe, inject the open crack with acetone to flush and pull the oil out of the crack when wedged open.
3. Get Acraglass Gel from Brownells, it is a two part gun stock epoxy for repair and glass bedding. It is stronger than wood and has virtually 0% shrinkage.
4. Mix the two parts equally with a drop or two of brown dye to match the wet stock's color.
5. When mixed add 3 or so drops of acetone at a time using the syrenge, until, while mixing you get a motor oil liquid consistency with the Acraglass.
6. Pull the thinned Acraglass up into the empty syringe and then inject the Acraglass directly inside the crack, it will pressure fill out from inside to outside. Make sure you get the Acraglass as far back towards the end of the crack as possible. 7. Remove the wedges, then wrap the crack area with 1 layer of clear plastic bag. Then wind the crack area with surgical tubing, under good pull tension the full crack length, with a pull loop keeper under the tubing wrap on the far side of the crack, pull the loop tight to hold the long wrap end.
8. Let stock repair setup for 24 hours,
9. remove surgical tubing and plastic wrap,
10. refinish the entire stock, sanding with the butt plate on, then starting at the finish stage with a stain on the entire stock to match the color desired.
11. Then apply a Pro Custom Oil sanded in stock sanding material filler so as to hide any crack residual or small cracks or holes, with the sanding dust paste. I prefer a 350 grit wet and dry paper with a circular motion, the paste is made with a 50-50% mix of Pro Custom Oil and mineral spirits with a couple drops of japan dryer in a tall pill bottle, shaken well.

Read the directions before you start the stock repair, each step requires a set or dry time. To repair a stock right requires time, days, not hours, because of the dry time involved. Once you learn, you can repair most any stock to where the repair disappears and is stronger than the wood itself.

Epoxy before yellow glue any day. I wouldn't dilute or heat the epoxy either, that just weakens it. Heat the wood with a hair dryer so the epoxy wicks in if you want, but you should be able to pack enough in there without doing that though.

Flush out the crack as good as you can with acetone, and let thoroughly dry (again with the diluting bit). We used so much West System epoxy in our shop that friendly factory reps stopped by a lot to shoot the breeze. To a man they cautioned against ever diluting epoxy with solvents as it messes up the chemistry of the stuff - if maximum bond strength is the goal.

Mask off the stock as close to the crack as you can get. It'll save on cleanup and if you cover as much as you can when cleaning initially with acetone you won't mess up the original stock finish such as it is, just be careful as acetone is pretty aggressive. No need to strip the whole dam thing unless you plan on refinishing it anyway. After clamping, scrape away the squeeze-out and give it a wipe with an alcohol soaked paper towel.

If that hole is non-critical like you say, I would drill it a bit deeper and insert a small dowel - as long as it's not so large that it'll prevent clamping the crack tightly closed. Engaging such a dowel into fresh clean wood will go a long way toward holding it together for the next 100 years because no matter how well you flush out that crack you aren't gonna get all the crud and corruption out of it that'll interfere with the epoxy bond.

As for what epoxy, they're all pretty good for this purpose. There's no need to buy the Super Duper Special epoxy (also known as "bedding compound") that Brown-give-me-all-your-money-ell's sells for a mundane job like this (or for much else for that matter).

Thanks for the tips Gents. I'll probably use the Devcon 2000# epoxy I already have. Drilling the hole deeper is a good thought, I'll have to check what small diameter hardwood dowels are available. I'm not planning to refinish the stock to look new, just close up and stabilize the crack so it doesn't continue and get any worse.

See Mark Novak's YouTube channel. He addresses it in several videos. Plus, educational and funny.

The dowell is a good plan, but you can easily whittle one from a walnut scrap. If ypu want it exact send me the measurements and I will turn one to exactly the size you want. I would drill it out a bit just to have more new wood in the hole.