Highwood To Low Wood To Highwood

Attachment 22159Attachment 22160Attachment 22161Attachment 22162Attachment 22163Attachment 22164Attachment 22165Attachment 22166 We,ve been having some rainy/snowy weather and I've been killing some time out in the "Hideout".
Here is a type2 OI stock that had a real hard life and needed some major repairs. It was broken from the front of the TH on both sides. The left side break went all the way to the barrel chanel.
Cleaned it up, glued the breaks and pinned the weak spots. Got the thought of restoring it back to a highwood, and would like to share the results.....Frank

Frank, I think you are really showing some high quality skills. I could never do the miracles you do :)

However, are you developing a technique that could potentially used by others?

Hi Ed, I replace missing and broken pieces in gun stocks all the time. I did an M1 Garand stock for a friend a while back. It needed some small cracks fixed and some patches.
I just put a patch in the right rail on a nice M-U LW stock, can hardly tell. It made it look a whole lot better. I'll get a picture of that repaire up in the morning.
I think this one looks better now also, compare the first pic and the sixth pic.
Are you thinking that restoring the HW is somehow crossing the line?

I'm interested in what you and the others think.....Frank

Just looked at the time. I'm off to the karate school, back about 8:30

I would say no line crossed. It's obviously been repaired, if you are buying a collector HW and you don't ask for pics, shame on you. A buddy if mine just got burned by not getting good pics.
Frank, do you want to fix a stock for me? I have a collector grade QHMC I dropped ad it broke in half. :(
PM me if you want to try!
Dave

Nice job Frank.

Frank, I think it looks grreeaatt! and no, you are not crossing the line.

I was just expressing a concern that certain others will see it, practice to repair a cut Type I and the use fuzzy pics to sell. Anything I did like that would be spotted in a moment. But if someone in Cailfornia happened to to have half the wood skills you and Charlie do, then alot of people will get riped off.

I consider what you are doing well within the proper world of repair and refurbishing REAL collectors.

Thanks Ed, I only wanted to share with you guys some of the stock work that I do. I took a lot of pictures of this project and thought I filtered out most of the technicle pics of "How To".
If you think I should deleat some or all of these please let me know.
I don't think you could make an oval cut into an I cut because of the dimensional differances. But I see your point that someone could try and take some fuzzy pics and try to doop a buyer.
I hope it hasn't got to the point were we can't even share what we consider part of the hobby of collecting, fixing and restoring.....Frank

Frank, when I first read your post I got really angry ! The next day however, I decided your woodworking skills and honesty, should be acknowledged and thanked. I got a couple of Carbines here where the Hi- Wood has been busted off and someone has tried to make it look like it never happened etc .... you know the story. This pic is of two I think are O.K. A good Hi Wood shouldn't have a sanded corner, but hard to learn about as most of that very vulnerable point of an early Carbine was busted off in the early stages of combat in 42/43 etc. Cheers Bud, Mike.Attachment 22323

Frank ; Great job! I guess to some folks "RESTORATION" means trying to fool someone for profit. To me it is an honest effort to bring an object back to its original state. It is still not original as it has been repaired and parts replaced. I guess if you restore a car,boat etc. it's OK to "some folks". Keep up the good work and thanks for sharing. GK

I don’t see how changing a stock back to a highwood that was altered by the government from a highwood to a lowwood to bring it up to current specs back in the day is any different than re-stamping the cartouche, removing a rebuild marking, removing markings from a type 3barrel band or removing an import mark.

They all change the historical integrity that for the most part we are trying to preserve.

Just because something can be done doesn’t mean it should be.

John