Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Recoil pad and filling holes for redrilling

Question on a recoil pad.

I am replacing the existing plastic butt plate on a Remington pump rifle 7600 .35rem with a limbsaver grind to fit. Done grind to fit before. My question is what to use to fill the screw holes to re-drill very close to the original hole? My experience with wood fillers is they do not harden and maintain for re-drill.

What options are there for wood fillers that are drillable?

Thanks

You can use wooden dowel rods and glue them in place.

I've always used two part plumbers epoxy putty. The type that comes wrapped in a clear plastic tube. It looks like a big tootsie roll(white on the inside/green or blue on the outside). Cut a piece off and knead it together until it becomes gray in color. It's thermo-activated and gets hot as you mix it. Use a toothpick or stripped q-tip and work it down into the screw holes until they're full, then smooth off the top with your finger. Let it dry overnight. It gets hard as a rock and is screwable, sandable and paintable. Work fast, it sets up pretty quickly once it gets hot. Works good for me.

Leftybolt

leftybolt
The problem with that is the old hole material is now harder than the surrounding wood and the drill is moved away from it if you are no tvery careful.

I prefer to hog out the old hole to include the spot where the new screws are going. Wax the pad and screws heavily and fill the enlarged holes with epoxy. Tape the pad exactly in place and shove the screws in tightly. When it cures the pad will be in the right place and the screws will be bedded and easily removable.
art

Sitka,

No offense taken and surely no offense intended, but I've used my method many times (8-10) and never had a drill bit move off center from where I intended it to go.

It's easy, use a center punch to tap a starter hole and drill slowly. "Piece of cake"

Having said that, I like your idea also, never thought of that.

There's more than one way to skin a cat.

Leftybolt

lefty
I went to the new way because I saw more than one example of a problem your way... Have also seen many successes your way. But the big difference IMO&E is that stock material can vary tremendously whether it is wood or plastic and my way covers them all...
art

Take a wooden golf tee, apply a little glue inside the stock screw hole. Tap in the golf tee. Cut the golf tee flush and / or sand to insure it is flat. Let glue set. Redrill new holes and does not matter if it over laps over golf tee. I have used this method for over 20 years and works great!

Done it many, many times by carving out an over sized toothpick outta douglas fir...standard scrap 2X4 material.

'Tis softer than the wood stock and that's the point. Dipped in glue of choice it can be pounded into place and it will reach the bottom of the old hole due to the toothpick shape, completely filling it. Being softer it will compress and form to the old hole less any risk of splitting the stock as might happen with a hard wood "dowel".

The glue will set hard from the "clamping" of being pounded into the hole and will "lock" into place in the old screw threads.

The trick to keeping a drillbit from wandering is to drill a very small pilot hole first, then drill the hole size needed. Drillin' end grain with an 1/8" drill bit is a piece of cake anyway.....

I've many pads installed with course threaded galvanized dry wall screws, 1 5/8". They bite hard, they are way easy to drive in due to the deep phillips drive (way less likely to strip out as do the elcheapo screws included with a pad), and the bugle head centers itself up in the pads screw hole which locks the thing from moving sided to side.

I've carved the pegs, glued 'em in, drilled the holes, and installed the pad....all in about 5 minutes. 'Tis an easy fix.

I have used those "soft" wooden dowels that hold top and bottom of cabinets together. Fairly soft wood, easy to taper bthe end. I coat them with "Gorilla" glue and tap them in. Then drill new holes to mount the pad.