Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats Butcher block stock

Has anyone here ever done your own butcher block style stock of laminated hardwood? I can get pieces of maple cutstock at work that will just be set out for firewood and glue them together with a clamp or something. Make a big enough piece and then carve my own stock.

I have the skills to do the work, i am just wondering if anyone else has done it?

I'm a woodworker, so I'll comment. Yes, you can glue up the wood and make a stock. I'm not going to do it, but you sure can. Suggestions:

- Use Titebond III glue, which is waterproof.
- Do the glue up with the wood lengthwise, in parallel with barrel direction.
- Use long wood pieces. Short pieces would lead to end-to-end glue bonds, which are so weak as to be worthless. There are router bits that will allow end bonds that are strong.
- Once the glue up is done, know that the glue lines won't accept stain, if you do intend to stain the wood.

Your plan can work. Good luck with it, and post pictures when you finish.

Most everything that I have ever seen glued, comes apart at some time or the other. Maybe I have not seen enough stuff, but I would not trust it. miles

Thin layers of wood will also have less stress, so one squirrely piece won't warp the whole thing.

Exactly!

Don't use Titebond anything. You want to use an epoxy. I use this for making all laminated products.
http://www.smooth-on.com/Epoxy,-Silicone-an/c11_1125_1179/index.html

When you are glueing anything like a gun stock I would cut & grind them to a minimun .0625" to .125" max thick and use flat sawn as much as possible. Bandsaw cut then grind to thickness with 60 grit. Preferably with a surface sander. You could use a belt sander if you make yourself a jig.
All laminated stocks made are spindle cut which I don't like. That product is pressed into the a flat sheets, glued and then cured in a microwave.
Thin flat cut will move less later staying more consistant. If you alternate the pieces so the growth rings are facing in opposite directions(back to back/belly to belly, etc).
Once you get everything cut and ground apply epoxy to both mating surfaces with an epoxy roller. Use two flat boards on the out side to clamp the bundle tight together. Use a lot of pressure with your clamps & use a lot of them. Let set for 24 hours and your redy to start forming your stock.

If you decide this is to much cutting and grinding. Then an other way that works is to find one piece that has very straight grain. Cut it to be your center (prefer flat sawn) say 5/8" thick. Then as many 3/8" thick pieces on both side of the 5/8" center you need to get to the overall thickness you need.

Didn't Rutland use high pressure and high heat to cure and make laminated stocks?

Yup, but they also used spindle cut product.

Anybody hear if Rutland is going to rebuild and start up again?

A good 20 ton press is also good for sandwiching the layer. I use Titebond and you can throw these blanks in the tub and they won't warp.

Adam

I saw one done that way. Had like 2 thin maple stripes right down the middle.. I thought it looked pretty cool..

I wouldn't worry so much about the adhesive as long as it is water proof. I would probably do epoxy just because. I would flip or flop individual layers to alternate the grain and the cup. Wood is still wood and will absorb/give off moisture over time as the relative humidity changes. Just have fun with it ... and of course ... Pictures !

Good luck...

In 1976 I was living in Karl Krogstad's [the filmmaker] house in Seattle when he was in Europe. In the middle of the night a butcher block bench, that Karl had built, exploded.

In the late 1980s I read Hoadley's book on understanding wood:
http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Wood-Craftsmans-Guide-Technology/dp/1561583588

Then I knew how the butcher block exploded.
The S shaped transform of relative humidity to equilibrium moisture content, in the fibers, maps linearly on the different expansion rates for tangential [7%], longitudinal [0.1%], and radial [4%] with respect to the grain.

All of which is just a bit of fancy language to describe the source of the force but overlooks the root cause of the failure. The glue failed, probably due to poor clamping pressure and a bad glue choice.

Epoxy is the best glue for the project in a home shop situation. Titebond in any mix should never be used because it is very fussy in clamping requirements for a laminate and far worse because it creeps under load.

Fresh Urea Formaldehyde glue would also be an excellent choice and in modified form is what virtually all plywood mills use. It is fussy about clamp-ups, but good technique would eliminate all those issues.

Veneer thickness for the glue-ups is not a problem in any way with reasonably straight-grained veneers. I have done them with 3/8" walnut separated by 1/8" maple and that was my favorite of the many I did way, way back.

Another was glued up with fairly thin walnut in the middle and then a layer of glued-up veneer of maple, cherry, maple that was about the same thickness all together as the walnut. I did another of the same combo oriented horizontally and it did not look all that bad.

I did some with tapered veneers in the middle also that were interesting.

In general, unless you have really special glue-up capability, do not try to glue the whole blank at once. Use strong slick cauls with melamine or similar faces if you can get them and be very careful about keeping glue off them.

Do not sand the veneers to thickness as someone suggested, they should be cut with a planer or the gluelines will be greatly magnified in appearance. I have an industrial quality thickness sander and have seen exactly what happens. You can sand to thickness and then scrape the entire surface to clean the fuzz.

I would have absolutely zero concern about orientation of the wood grain as far as strength goes in any reasonably thin veneer glue-up.

If you can lay-up the dimensions of the stock using a large inlet piece of very lightweight wood as a filler it will get you past some of the weight issues with laminate stocks.

PM your phone number and a good time to call if you want to talk about the project or have questions.
art

You should be asking advice, not giving it...

Wow, Sitka, here we go again. Yes the formaldehyde type glue would be better. Back when I worked in a plywood mill we used that glue, and I think we referred to it as a phenolic resin glue. We also had a monster hydraulic press for the glue ups, which few people are going to have access to. And yes, an epoxy type glue would also likely be better. But, I have made many butcher block cutting boards for people, including a professional caterer that asked me to make him a specific type board of a certain wood, thickness, and shape. I did so using Titebond III. It has been about 5 years now and he says they are still great. The wood cost for each board was about $100, and those rascals are heavy. The guy catered brisket for Continental Airlines and 10,000 people and he used my butcher block boards. So...I think I can say that Titebond III works fine in rather severe service. I use Titebond glues quite a bit. I don't use any type polyurethane Gorilla Glues any more. I just don't like using it. The company I retired from made much of that type glue, and it has it's uses.

Now, back to the OP. He wanted to make a butcher block type stock. That suggests to me that he was not going to use thin veneers, but would use larger chunks of wood. TB III would probably work fine in that type glue up. I would not have suggested that for a thin veneer glue up, because creep could be an issue for someone that didn't have the experience, equipment, and clamps that I have.

Prior to using TB III in cutting boards, I used TB II. I never thought to tell anyone to NOT put them in the dishwasher. Happily, TB III seems to hold up in the dishwasher, though I still don't recommend it.

Are you still mad about my seeing no rust freckles on that gunstock? Lighten up.

I & my extended family have varied sizes of laminate cutting boards I made in 1972 in wood shop. I used Elmer's Woodworking Glue from a squeeze tube. One of those boards is 3'x6'x1" Oak strips.

They have all had more water across them over the years than Niagra Falls. They are all still in service with no signs of slowing down.

Years ago I toured Mel Smart's shop in Kalispell. He was the originator of the stocks that are now Serengeti. I even picked out my own blank and he laid it up for me. He had 5-gallon buckets of Titebond (I don't remember which generation). He band-sawed the layers (mine is 5 layers) and then lighted planed them before they were glued and clamped in a screw fixture.

I can tell you that for aircraft repair we used to have to use Urea Formaldehyde glue. It is now considered obsolete for aircraft structure repair. The only glue now is Recorcinal glue (Recorcinal-formaldehyde). This glue has to be mixed. I think epoxy is allowed if it comes with engineering instructions as well but there are so many different epoxies that using the right one is imperative.

The stocks that Mel made held up well. Dave Scoville, editor of Rifle magazine took one of Mel's stocks and kept it in his shower for a month and then buried it in a snow back for the duration of the winter. I seem to recall that he found no warpage nor delamination of the joints.

Mel made laminated baseball bats as well. He showed me the data where they could get more than 1000 at-bats from one of his laminated bats. He said that the lobby from the long time bat makers kept his product from ever becoming adopted. He said that it would save the average player at least a $1000 a season just in broken bats! It was no advantage in hitting just more durable. He said that he used Titebond on this as well.

Mel seemed to think that the type of glue was not as important as the prep and clamping process.

As Art pointed out, sanded joints are bad news and in fact, not allowed in aircraft repairs.

Here is what the FAA thinks of Urea glue:

Plastic resin glue, also known as a urea-formaldehyde
adhesive, came on the market in the middle to late 1930s.
Tests and practical applications have shown that exposure
to moist conditions, and particularly to a warm humid
environment, under swell-shrink stress, leads to deterioration
and eventual failure of the bond. For these reasons, plastic
resin glue should be considered obsolete for all aircraft
repairs. Discuss any proposed use of this type adhesive on
aircraft with FAA engineering prior to use.


Sounds like if you want to use it you better be prepared to explain why! Probably work fine here in Arizona but not the best for being dishwasher safe

Okay, a few points... gunstock suitability and cutting board suitability are miles and miles apart. There is virtually no carry-over in applications.

Titebond glue is not structural and non-load-bearing because it creeps. Under the shock of recoil wood is subjected to much different forces than about anything else.

Notice very few woods are ever used for stocks. There is a reason for that. Few woods have the proper combination of properties to withstand the shock. Flexibility, strength across the grain, working strength to failure, and many more properties determine how good the joint will be.

Aircraft usage of Urea Formaldehyde is primarily not allowed anymore due to the difficulty in controlling temperature during curing, which is critical to final strength. Improper curing would lead to early problems and lab tests showed a wide range of finished properties when applied under poor control. It was not a result of water changes so much as shown by them to be problematic.

Aircraft appropriate woods were and are also very different from stock woods. And Titebond is not allowed in aircraft use in any formulation. Again, because it creeps like all PVA and polymer glues.

The creeping will allow gluejoints to telegraph their location over time. The Serengeti, Mel Smart system is different in that he laid up veneers back in line with their original positions in the board. The idea was to interrupt forces and minimize their play by turning them into different units rather than the whole working in a given direction. Fewer laminations and fewer directional force changes leave it less likely to telegraph, but in my opinion borne of much testing it is a lousy, but cheap glue choice for the job.

More later...

I suspect the OP was using the term "butcher block" because he lost the term "laminated" for a minute while asking his question. Because there is virtually no crossover in requirements between gunstock lamination and cutting board lamination you can rest assured your cutting board experience is not applicable...

You may also rest easy knowing your lack of perception of the most common things coupled with your willingness to share your lack of basic Physics comprehension truly puts you in a special clique.