I just had a four foot diameter ash log sawed in Minnesota. I grew up with that tree....it was large when I can first remember it as a young kid.

I've decided it needs at least one gunstock made from it and had two nice blanks sawed....sorry, no pics.....

Since I've never used ash for this before, I'm asking for any advice you folks can offer....yes....I know it's fairly dense and therefore heavy...what's your advice?

Not so different in density from maple or birch.

Plenty of traditional muzzleloaders have been stocked with ash. Is the wood properly dried and ready to be worked or is it recently cut? Do you want to do the work yourself or have someone else do it? If you're wanting a project I recommend going with Custom Rifle Stocks in Aaronsburg, PA.

Like you, I had a piece of wood from a sugar maple on my aunt and uncle's place, a tree we'd all walk by every time we went hunting. An ice storm took it down and I eventually had CRS profile me out a stock set for a Ruger No. 3 project. I'm in the home stretch with it now and its been very satisfying.

I have used ash for a few home projects. I think it would make a fine stock, please follow up with some picks of the finished stock if you decide to do it.

I wonder what the wood drying time is compared to Maple or Walnut...Isn't it usually measured in years?...Many years...

Without being kiln dried, wood will cure about an inch per year, if stored in good conditions.

We used a lot of ash trim in the house. A lot of nice grain. Should look good on a rifle. I'll second pabucktail's recommendation for Custom Rilfe Stocks. If they don't have a pattern you like, they'll duplicate yours.

I will have this kiln dried to 6% and then routed by Dennis Olson of Plains Montana. He has done many for me and I've always been happy with his work.

I will take the blanks to the Amish in Augusta Wisconsin for the kiln drying and suspect that will be about March before I can have a blank routed.

That's about the time to go salmon fishing on Lake Superior.

I've done a few customs before including my own checkering so now the thing I need to do is to find an action to put in it....let me see if I can find some photos

Here is a Maple stock I built for a Howa 1500













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Dang! You've got skills! That's pretty.

Really interesting stock, the first spalted one I have seen. Lots of guitars but unusual on a rifle stock. I like a light suigi or flame finish on ash axes and baseball bats. If done very subtlety it enhances the grain and color. Overdone it looks cheap. Ash responds well to potassium permanganate too, same thing as the flame needs to be very subtle or it looks bad. It is easy to sand back to almost bare wood.

Nice work Vapodog! How easily does maple checker compared to walnut? How many LPI is that stock? I've never done any checkering but plan to get some tools and have a go at it.

Not Vapo but if anything it takes checkering even better than Walnut. It is harder but more homogeneous. The birdseye or fiddleback figure can be more difficult but no more so than walnut burl.

here is a photo of three ash stocks that were kiln dried in Wisconsin

the photos don't do the wood justice. One is being routed in Montana now. I'll post a photo when it arrives.

I would be tempted to do a very light stain more of a wash coat to increase the contrast, but the grain is so nice on those already maybe oil alone will make them pop, then what ever is your finish of choice. Might be worth testing on the scrap wood. Oil, diluted spirit stain and finish only. I would also look at some muzzle loaders for comparison. Some of these were treated with Aquavit, Iron Oxide and vinegar, Potassium permanganate and flame finishes.

I hope you saved some of the straighter grain wood for axe handles or other tool handles. The lower two I can picture the stock already, the upper one doesn't have as obvious a layout on it.

We still have some ash pole corral at the family farm, and I cut some for repairs and for gatesticks in barbed wire gates every few years. When green, it is very supple. A green gatestick will bow into a C shape in a short time under tension. An ash gatestick allowed to season for two or three years is strong, won't bow, and lasts forever.

In corral poles, they are best installed green. They season over the decades to as hard as iron! A 50 year old ash pole needs to be drilled for the spike to hold it to a post if you need to reinstall it. They get a little brittle then, occasionally break at the thin end. .

I know you asked about gunstocks, but from this experience I would say that a good piece of ash, dried properly, would make a fine stock. I would not make the wrist too thin, though.

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This is the first modern type rifle I've seen with a Spalted Maple stock. Nice!

Ash is of course a particularly open grained "ring-porous hardwood" so you will have a bigger job getting the grain filled smooth than you would with typical walnut. But if you can get a quarter-sawn piece out of your log it should make a stable, rock-hard, stock. Might not take very fine checkering though. Please update if you proceed.
cheers,
Rex

fissile...

A reminder of the ash project

Very nice!

Wow

Just an addition....walnut root wood widow's peak

Dang both of your rifles are beautiful. That's some mighty fine work on the widow's peak....you should be proud. Congratulations. I'm anxious to see what type of action and caliber you select.......

Actually it only one rifle. It will house a Howa 7-08

Beautiful. Love the grain of ash.

Looks great! Thanks for the follow up pictures.

Just added some sling swivel studs

Very purty. 😀 I wish I had the patience, skill and tools to do that.

Excellent,

appreciate you sharing your work.

Dude, why you asking us? You're definitely a pro at this. Just show us some picks when you're through.

Vapodog; thank you for your ongoing efforts in keeping us informed on the ash project. Your stock work is beautiful. The choice of a 7-08 Howa is stellar in my opinion, for what my opinion is worth

Thanks again for sharing the story and pictures.

GRF

cutting the bolt handle relief



The bolt handle seems to fit nicely


And sand a ramp for the eject port.

Gorgeous. I am very envious of your skills.

Nice work!

Outstanding work. I never thought ash could look that good. All the ask trees around here are either dead or dying. I had to take down all the ash trees in my yard - 40 or so - a long time ago. They went into my fireplace.

Very nice stock!

I wonder why walnut has been, traditionally, the sigle wood choice for gun stocks.

By far the best common wood, worldwide due to mechanical characteristics. Only one NA wood has better mechanical properties when comparing equally dense woods. That would be bigleaf maple, but it is usually much less dense than walnut. Among the characteristics making a difference (in no particular order) would be stability in use, bending strength, hardness, average density, beauty, tendency to (not) split, shrinkage rates in the two major cross-grain directions, ease of drying, and others. Many are great in a specification or two, few are close in all the categories.

Maples are okay, but usually if they are tough enough to be really good they are mighty heavy. And because the various strength characteristics vary due to many mechanical properties just being heavy is not everything.

Myrtle makes a beautiful stock and performs well, but it is quite difficult to dry and supply and distribution are lacking.

Weatherby used screwbean mesquite for a while on some stocks, but it is rarely big enough.

That walnut root tip complements the stock nicely. Often as not, I find fore stock tips a net drag on a stock's appearance, but the shape and color tones really work with this one. Well done.

Nice, it that white ash?

Stunning result

it was grown in southern Minnesota.....that's all I know about it.

progress update

I finally got inletting screws from Brownells and inletted the bottom metal to fit the barreled action. l also installed a scope 3-9 power.



The rifle went to the range for testing.....



here's the result with TTSX 120 grain and a modest charge of CFE223.....a full 100 yards.....I'm happier than a kitten in a creamery.

I'd say yes. I have made enough ash canoe paddles to recognize white ash grain. Black ash has a totally different grain structure and splits easily. Although it could be green ash. I had a forestry professor tell me that to tell the difference between green ash and white ash, you have to look at your feet. If your feet are wet, it's green ash. If they're dry, it's white ash.

Very handsome and beautifully done.

Great job Vapodog! Thanks for taking us along on this project.

Beautiful job!

This clock is black ash, not that close detail.

Beautiful.

It's finally done. I'll post a couple more photos in a few minutes.

Looks great--and apparently shoots great!

How did you feel about ability of the ash to take checkering? I ask because of checkering a wide variety of wood, including Claro walnut and Oregon maple, which were OK but not my favorite.

last two photos

Prior to this I've checkered several types of walnut and maple. Ash (or at least this stuff) checkered nicely when I was going across the grain or even mostly across the grain. But seemed like spongy cutting with the grain as the cutter (carbide from Ullman) wanted to not bite into the wood. This forced me to increase pressure with my fingers and they get quite tired in a hurry.

I have two more stocks just like this coming up and maybe by the time I'm finished with them the term "ash" will take on an entirely different meaning than it does now.

Aha!

That's exactly what I wanted to know....

Here is a piece of spalted maple that I built last year. It checkered quite nicely.

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Oh, yeah!

Maple can checker very well--and also be pretty soft. Depends a lot on the kind of maple, and where it's grown--just like other woods, including walnuts.

Not wanting highjack a splendid thread on ash stocks.

That clock was $100Ca at a garage sale at Eagle river, Ontario last year. My lovely wife took the works to a repair man, and bought that fancy lyre, I don't want to know what that all cost!

Sorry, back to the thread.

The first two are of a stock I did for a friend, way back when. The wood was a spectacular figured piece of Claro walnut, but checkering it was so "soggy" I settled on 18 LPI. It was still a kind of PITA.

The last is a piece of New Zealand-grown European walnut, on a rifle I stocked for myself. It was hard and consistent enough to easily take finer checkering, if I recall correctly 22 LPI. (It's also the only rifle I stocked that I still have, a 6.5x55 on an FN action, with a 3-position Dave Gentry safety he installed a couple years before he passed away.)

Eventually did not have enough "spare" time to do stocks, and noticed my checkering patterns on my own rifles were getting smaller and smaller, indicating a certain level of burn-out. But it was fun while it lasted!

Surprisingly I have a grandfather's clock exactly like that. It was built from amarican black walnut in about 1965. It quit working and was taken to a guy that repaired it.....a bit past $400 repair bill. If you bought the clock for $100 canadian, you owe the seller a big kiss!!!

Specctacular.....John, did you do the checkering?

Yep, as explained in the post. (Somehow have not figured out how to post photos and words at the same time.)

Haven't made a wooden stock in quite a while, much less checkered one. These days am more of a spray-can artist!

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Love that spalted maple. To get that size of a piece where the fungus formed the lines but didn't damage the wood is pretty rare.

stock number two of three.....looks like a winner I'd say

Beautiful!

Thanks for keeping us in the loop.

Purty. I love it.

Wow!

Excellent vapodog.

Ash is no longer just for baseball bats.

Keep the pics coming.

Kudos to you VapoDog! I’ve got hundreds of standing dead ash thanks to the Emerald Ash Borer.

An interesting factoid is that Ash’s low tannins make it susceptible to the EAB, but is also why it’s leaves are a significant food source for tadpoles.

Very cool to see a tree from your own history get used for a nice project. Ash is becoming a wood I look to use more as we are in the hot zone of the Emerald Ash borer. I fear it may be our next American Chestnut in our area. There is a very good stand if it in the North East and it has been a staple for projects like canoe parts and tool handles. Unfortunately it is not rot resistant and once the tree dies on the stump there is a very short window to use it before the lumber is effected.
Again very nice stock work. Thank you for posting the photos.

Absoutely beautiful wood and crafmanship! Having split a lot ash for the stove,one of its great qualities is that it splits easily-did you take and extra precautions against splitting-pinning the wrist.etc.?

No....but I will give it some serious thought.

Thank you.

here is the last of the three that was cut from that tree

The barreled actions are all 100% inletted so it's not a long shot to finishing them. Maybe by December

They look good.

I had no idea Ash had that kind of figure.When I was making knives I used a lot of stabilized Butternut Burl and Stabilized Birch Burl.They had some knockout figure.

If you ever get into hand to hand combat with a bear and you have to use one as a club, just be sure you’re holding the “trademark” up. 😀

Those have all turned out spectacularly.

Beautiful work vapodog.....and beautiful wood!! I wouldn’t be too concerned about stability in those pieces. I too have split ALOT of ash and the straight grained pieces split incredibly easy - the not so straight pieces (branches, butt area, and other types of irregular natural features) do not and that’s were yours came from. I’ve had to use the 34-ton spliter on those pieces and they still do not easily split. Again great work and thanks for sharing!

I’ve been working with some black cherry burl on a couple of Winchester 9422 stocks that I’ll share when/if I can ever get them finished!

PennDog

This is the metalwork to run with the wood.



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Wow, that looks great. Please keep the pictures and details coming.

GRF

The beauty of that wood plus the fact you know the history of the tree combine to make this even more special!!

Keep the pics coming please.

Mike

Impressive!

Very, very nice.

It's really great that you salvaged a wonderful tree! And that stock .... wow.

Vapo: Beautiful work.

Has anyone used Hickory to stock a rifle?

I would think hickory would be on the heavy side, but it sure would be durable.

actually ash is also on the heavy side. In this case however the wood grain trumps (did I say that?) the weight.

I got some serious backlog of projects that have delayed the finishing of the rest of the ash stocks but will back on them soon. This retirement gig isn't at all bad.

Beautiful stocks. I wish I had the skills and knowledge to do those.

Never had a stock, but still have a little ash pole corral. When you build it with fresh cut poles, they're incredibly strong and have quite a bit of flex when a cow hits them. Acter they season, still strong but hard as a rock. You can saw and drill them, but an ax will just bounce. I bet a stock from well seasoned ash would be very stable. But not a lightweight. Just read back and see I posted a year ago. Oops!

I gotta say vapodog has a nice Ash.

Yes sir, them’s nice.

Love the color & figure.

Gorgeous !!


Jerry

here they are.....all three guns from an old ash tree.....AND THEY SHOOT

So what it seems is that if you find some very pretty ash and don't mind some blond gunstocks, ash can do the job nicely.

Congrats, you pulled it off! Nicely done!

Absolutely spectacular-excellent outcome…

Beautiful

One thing for sure, you'll have a good supply of ash if you want to continue this endeavor.
Beautiful work, vapodag

Really nice workmanship.

Three beauties. Nice work on all three.

Outstanding work! Where did you get those swivel studs, I need to install some in a rifle I did.

Outstanding work, you got talent.

I got them direct from Talley.....however Brownells might have them by now as well.

Marvelous work, vapodog!!!

Now show me again where the painted plastic stocks can compare with these examples of stunning beauty.

Those are really nice Vapodog - excellent work!!

PennDog

I thank each and every one of you for your encouraging comments. It goes a very long ways in making me want to continue things like this.....

If you have curly Ash, it makes a checkerboard type pattern on a stock. I've seen several KY longrifles with curly ash and they had a really different look. It tends to be heavy, but on a modern rifle with a hunting taper barrel, it shouldn't be a problem.

Outstanding!!!

Wow vapodog those are amazing.


Thank you so much for your efforts in bringing us along on this project

Beautiful work 👍

Nothing wrong with those,they are good looking.

My father in law did work like that. I always envied him that talent - he did better woodwork when he was 16 than I could ever do. Beautiful.

@OP - Beautiful rifles. Well done...

Just for thits and giggles, I'll throw this in as it was done along with the ash stocks. This is black American walnut:
It houses a Model 70 post 64 featherweight in .257 Roberts.

Absolutely amazing work. Ash is a favorite of mine. Copied a very large desk that was used in the shipyard in town by the paymaster. That is up in VT at my cousins and will serve their family for years.
Its really unfortunate that the Emerald Ash borer is loose in the North East. Ash is dead on the stump all over New England. And due to the open pores of the wood it rots on the stump quickly. The long tradition of bats, paddles and other useful items made of Ash looks to be headed the same path as American Chestnut.
Your stocks are a great tribute to a fine tree. Thanks for posting.
Bob

Nice chunka wood.

vapodog;
Good morning to you sir, Happy Father's Day if that applies.

Thanks so much for sharing the photos of the stocks with us. The ash and walnut stocks have stunning figure in them!

As someone whose done a wee bit of checkering in the dim past, I'll say whomever did that is very, very talented and has good eyes... well they did when they were checkering those stocks!

Honestly that's the toughest part now for me. The spirit is willing, but the eyes are weak!

Thanks again and all the best.

Dwayne

That's a beautiful piece of American walnut too--and if course a great job with it! Where did you get the wood?

The wood was cut by the Amish in Wisconsin. I searched for a long time to find this "chunk" of wood and it had been kiln dried. I've also found some fine boards of Maple with which I make sandwich laminates. Some spalted and some quite "curly".
The walnut specimen is a gift for a friend in Wisconsin and one of the ash species will be a gift to my brother for giving me the three blanks.

I have one more bolt rifle to make.....may post it later because it's quite different.

Looking forward to seeing it!

very nice!