$value$ of homemade stocks

M

MadScientist

New member
Poodleshooter and I were discussing this the other day. I have access to a lot of free hardwood lumber and thought that it would be cool one day soon to make a stock out of a pretty peice of maple or black walnut.
My question is, if I decided to make more than one of these what might I be able to get for them?
Poodleshooter thought that with commercial stocks available for <$50, I'd not be able to get much.
However, I can get some really pretty peices of wood....
 
Ambitious idea but harder to pull off than you might think...

The wood has to dry properly usually in a kiln. The grain of the wood has to be suitable- flowing properly so the stock doesn't fracture on the first shot. The stock design must be laid out properly on the wood to take advantage of the grain. The grain must be beautiful for any real value i.e. more than 50 bucks... Are you going to carve them by hand? Ever try that? Pretty wood is often very hard wood.

Do you have a local wood mill? Might be able to work out a deal with them... Local stockmaker even better... Some of them might mill the wood for you.

I would really hate to see that lumber in someone's fireplace rather than on a fine custom rifle or made into some interesting furniture... rescue that wood... good luck.
 
I'll second making sure the wood is dried properly. Not sure what kind of money you can make selling homemade stocks, but you could probably making some good money selling the wood at rec.woodworking....
 
kiln dried!! yikes. I was planning to put it in the barn rafters for a couple years (some has already been in the rafters for 10+ years)

Then again, it's usually pretty hot up in the rafters so maybe that approximates a kiln pretty good.

I hoping to rough cut the stocks on a band saw and carve (or powers sand) from there. I'll try to find a book on it to see if there's anything that's not intuituve about taking advantage of the grain for strength.

Yeah, I'm scrubbing the idea of making any stocks for profit, but there would be a huge "cool" factor for me to be shooting a rifle with my homemade stock on it.
 
If the wood is really good it could be worth more in the plank than as stock blanks.

I know someone who once paid a bit over $10k for enough wood to make just one stock for a custom double. It was a "really nice piece" of Iranian walnut, so he said.

-ric
 
You might want to consider handgun grips. They take less wood. Air drying in a barn for 10yrs might get it. I'd spend a little money on a moisture tester to be sure.
 
http://www.richardsmicrofitstocks.com

will mill customer's wood for $73... they offer a nice Old Classic Style stock... maybe you could run your idea by them. The prettier the wood, the more the $$$- provided the wood is properly prepared.

Now I'm off to plant the back 40 with Iranian Walnut trees...
 
I have no idea what the lumber to which you have access actually is, but the most probable fly in the oinment is that unless the wood was specifically cut for rifle blanks by a cutter knowledgabe in just the right techniques, the blanks usually (most of them anyway) turn out to be just about useless for the stockmaker:
1. The size needed is odd for anything else.
2. The cuter has to have a good feel for "laying out the grain" in a manner good for stocks.
3. Getting the highest and most valuable blanks (the figured ones) out of a walnut log involves an experienced and intuitive knack for preconcieving how a blank can be cut so that the "figure" (burl, feather, crotch wood, etc.) winds up in the butt of the future stock while the grip has normal wood flowing through it "just right". This would be next to impossible to achieve unless the log were being cut intentionally for stocks.
However, if you can find a peice that looks good for a stock, by all means save it and try your had at it yourself. There are a lot of people (well, at least a few) that have "pantograph" machines that can cut the bulk of the wood down to a stock type that you would like, leaving just enough wood for you to finish. This would be hard enough for a first try.
I believe that the traditional seasoning time of a walnut blank is 7 years, so anything older than this should be as stable as the blank will ever get.
 
Thanks all for your knowledgable replies.

I am in the process of cutting up some trees that a neighbor had blown down last fall (must have been some wind).

There is some black walnut, red and white oak, hard maple, and hickory.
(My dad told me not bother with the hickory because it was too hard to do anything with but I'll try anyway)
Anyway, I was cutting 4ft sections of the hickory trunk (~2 ft diameter) but find that I can't get them in my truck (they probably weight ~400lbs). So I am attempting to rip these segments into thirds which yields three ~6in slabs.
I only got half way through one cut before my chain was too dull (hadn't had it sharpened yet this year).
So, before I go at it again this coming weekend, is this a good idea? (e.g. is hickory really not worth the trouble? are the ~6in slabs thick enough? Being that these slabs are from the trunk they may not be as pretty as burl but then again, maybe I'll just end up turning some baseball bats from it.)
 
if you can get straight 5-8 foot sections out of the trees,
they will have some value to the veneer industry

Then you can buy a McMillan stock
;)

dz
 
The size of the blanks should be approximately 36x8x3 inches. If you can get 36x15x3 inches, you can squeeze 2 stocks from one blank. The most valuable wood will be "quarter sawn", that is, with the annual rings running parralel to the 3 inch dimension.
I never hear of hickory being used for stocks, perhaps the weight is the problem. I'll look it up in some of my books tonight and see what they say.
 
IIRC you should quartersaw and box the heart rather than flatsawing for things like bats and stocks.

A good reference book I've used for cutting and drying is "Understanding Wood" author is Bruce Hoadley.

The hickory should split much more easily than sawing. If it's hedgerow timber watch out for nails and old fence steel/iron - that maybe what dulled your blade.

-ric
 
Ahh, a tree question.

Herodotus has it right - selecting where and what to cut is critical. Also, unless you get very lucky, kiln drying is necessary to get check-free pieces of the correct moisture content that are sufficiently large to use. Large temp variations and the variable (and, in Va , high) humidity in a barn will not simulate a kiln. High temps alone are not enuf - moisture control is key. Some species air-dry ok if stacked properly, but it has to be done carefully and air-drying is usually just the 1st step before kiln drying for hardwoods anyway.

Drying issues aside, walnut and maple are your best bets. They're chosen for stocks because they're either what we tree people refer to as 1) "diffuse porous" and don't have large vessels in the wood formed early in the year (maple) or 2) if they're ring porous the vessel density is very low (walnut). Vessels are big cells in wood that conduct water, and both hickory and oak are very ring porous with high vessel densities and large diameter vessels (which is why the rings are so distinct). Among other things, this makes them difficult to machine very smooth (unless the trees are growing v. slowly, which makes the rings narrow and the surface easier to work smooth). And, it makes working countours and abrupt changes in contour (such as found in a stock) difficult to do and still get a smooth surface. Both oak and hickory do not "retain shape" as well as the other species either, which is bad in gunstocks.

The oak is best plank-sawn and used for millwork or peeled for veneer, but you have to cut the tree with those things in mind ahead of time. Hickory makes good tool handles and cabinetry (and skis in the old days), but probably won't make much of a gunstock.
 
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