Building new woodenware and refinishing for your gun.

This forum is pretty vacant thusfar as it's really young so I'll start to fill one.
Has anyone ever tried to make a new gunstock blank from scratch? I did recently starting with a fresh cut chunk of walnut from a seasoned tree. It's looking great so far, well the second try is. It's for my dads old .35 cal. deer rifle lever action. Everything was pretty straight forward except for the fit at the action. Those little grooves sucked and made me ruin the first attempt. They're a real you know what to get just right. After finishing the shaping of it I sanded it down real good and matched the old finish up with a red chestnut stain. After the stain dried I coated it with about fifteen coats of Spar urethane for the clearcoat protectant.
While that was drying I disassembled the rest of the gun. I stripped and refinished the forearm and proceeded to strip the blued finish off of the metal parts. After that was done I re-blued the metal and have yet to put it back together. I think it's going to look great.
It was a very educational experience and would recommend trying it at least once if anyone has an old gun thats in need. I loved doing it, what a blast. I'm planning on trying to do some carving work on a few blanks and see how that goes. I wouldn't mind doing it for a little extra money, that would be cool.
If anyone else has tried it I'd love to hear your experiences and the boards could use the traffic.

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Giving expert advice since 3 minutes, 12 seconds ago.

WOW

thats amazing. I would eventually screw up and break something important. What kind of gun is this your trying to rebuild.

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I've hunted nearly every day of my life, Every day that i've not hunted has been WASTED!!!

DUCKS FLY TOGETHER

Thats my future necklace.

Thanks H2. The rifle is a Marlin 1870 336 RC .35 cal. lever action. It's real similar to a Marlin .30-.30 most are more familiar with that in comparison. Sorry for the delayed response. I was in the shop reassembling that gun. Man, that was kind of an itch if you know what I mean. I'd had it apart for a week now while refinishing everything and forgot the order in which things came apart. I had to take it apart four times and reassemble it before I finally got it right. Dang things aren't as simple as they look.

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Giving expert advice since 3 minutes, 12 seconds ago.

You should most definatly get some pictures on here.

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I've hunted nearly every day of my life, Every day that i've not hunted has been WASTED!!!

DUCKS FLY TOGETHER

Thats my future necklace.

Here you go. Sorry, I never thought to take any pics in the middle of the process. I wish I would have, I will next time though. Looks like a new gun now, even though this gun was bought by my dad some time before I was born. Which makes it thirty two plus years old. It may be over forty!. This gun has killed more deer than anyone can remember, and enough yotes to fill a big rig , Laughing

haha!

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Giving expert advice since 3 minutes, 12 seconds ago.

WOW THATS AMAZING IT LOOKS NEW

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I've hunted nearly every day of my life, Every day that i've not hunted has been WASTED!!!

DUCKS FLY TOGETHER

Thats my future necklace.

Thanks! thats what I was going for. The fit at the reciever isn't perfect but I felt it was acceptable. It's far better than what was there to start with. My dad a few years back was trying to break up a dog fight between a stray and our dog and in the process of smacking the stray over the hesd with his rifle broke it at the neck. Well instead of buying a new one he glued it back together, which worked just fine but didn't look that great.

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Giving expert advice since 3 minutes, 12 seconds ago.

Yes that looks like it just came out of the box

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Kody Daniel

Actually, my dad said it looks better than it did new. He said the stock never had that nice a finish on it. I have to say that doesn't surprise me. The spar urethane I used was a SOB to apply. It's not like the interior stuff I'm used to. I bought the stuff in a spray can and it's superthin. I had the stock just about done once and the wire that I suspended it from broke, dropping the piece on the floor. You can imagine what it looked like when I picked it up. It was scratched and had dirt stuck to it. I had to sand it down and refinish and start over with the clearcoat. Finally the last time, I started the space heater and pointed it at the stock, now re-hung with new wire, and re-applied the urethane. The stuff was getting tacky as it hit the warm stock and I had it refinished in about twenty minutes with about fifteen coats of urethane. Its hard to tell in the photos but now it looks like one of those wooden clocks that has the baked on epoxy coating on it. Repeating the results won't be so hard now that I know what to do.
I'm going to re-finsh my shotgun next except I'm going to carve a duck scene on one side and a pheasant scene on the other with my dremmel tool. I'll post pics of that here too. This time with before and after shots so it doesn't look like I just made it up. Laughing

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Giving expert advice since 3 minutes, 12 seconds ago.

d@#n that is nice.good work birdman

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"When guns are outlawed,Ill become an outlaw"

Looks great! Taking pictures and notes while you dissasemble will help you when you need to reassemble a gun.

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Doug

Member: NRA, DU
F.A.B. Field Technician

Where were you and your advice earlier smart guy? :P Laughing

JK. Thanks thats a great idea, too bad I didn't think of it a week and a half ago. Laughing

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Giving expert advice since 3 minutes, 12 seconds ago.

How long did this take you on a guess?? And how much would you make one for?? I mean you can make one for my gun so you can get some more practice, Ill lend my gun out if it can help ya!! Laughing

Tbt34. Thanks for you consideration Laughing

whataguy

. What kind of gun do you have? This one I did took quite a while but I just worked on it off and on. In terms of hours spent on it: I'd say about twelve to fifteen hours. Not including the drying times for the stain and clearcoat. Each of those took about 24hrs. So all together probably about four days. Dang I hadn't realized I had that much in it until I added it up just now. :o Laughing

Of course two of those days don't involve much other than applying subsequent coats.
Also that was for carving the blank from a stick of wood. Basically a one off creation. It takes some time to decide exactly how to go about shaping the piece, and it might be wise to allow some time for more than one try. Factory blanks are available for most gun models I think, I'm not sure about costs. I do still have plenty of great walnut left though, and the carving out of the new one was kind of the fun part.
Other considerations would be, what color stain one might want or go back to original or as close to it as possible. Monte carlo stock or not? The monte carlo's are really cool looking but would take a little more time most likely.
I'd say $1.5 million should catch it, but since your a member here I'd do it for $500,000 Shocked

8) . Come on thats a savings of an entire $1 million. Now thats a discount!!! Laughing

:wink:
Of course I'm just kidding. Seriously, $150 and shipping would probably catch it. And thats just $100 bucks short of buying a chessie puppy I wanted, Cooooool!!!

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Giving expert advice since 3 minutes, 12 seconds ago.