New life for an old Enfield stock

[englishman_ca]

I am tinkering with another project and have had this old well sanded fore stock donated to the cause.

It appears to be a Mk.II MLM or MK.I MLE as there is what used to be a clearing rod channel in the front underside, it is now filled with a strip of walnut.The barrel channel has a liner and an SMLE barrel fits. There is a relief for an SMLE rear sight bed and the rear handguard has cutouts for springs that are the same distance apart as those on the SMLE.

Front volley sight cutout has had some wear and tear.

The stock has had some severe sanding over the years. Bit of a problem at the trigger guard inletting.

There is an old armourer's repair on both sides that has let go. It has been sanded so much there is nothing much left of the inletting. The sides of the trigger guard are completely exposed.
I looked in the junk drawer and found a piece of walnut from a sportered SMLE forearm. It had not been sanded too much in the trigger guard area.

After staring at the two pieces of wood for a while, I jigged things up on a flat surface and marked everything off. I stared at it a while longer and then got the saw out.

I cut the damaged area right out hoping to get some real estate to glue a wood patch in place. I cut the corresponding chunk out of the donor stock.

And then spent a while fitting things uppaying great attention around the front trigger guard bushing. This area is important to the stocking up. You can see the six dowels from the old repair by the armourer.

I glued things with cynoacrolate(?) super glue and clamped it up tight.

I shaped things up blending one piece into the other.

So far so good. The stock might have seen better days, it aint pretty but it has a new lease of life and will work for this Frankenfield. I like the look of it already.

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[louthepou]

Thanks for the great pictorial!

Only thing I would have done differently is the glue (I would have used West Epoxy) and I would have put a few dowels, but that's it. I doubt I would have been as good as you on the cutting, blending and matching of the two parts!

Lou

[englishman_ca]

Yes, putting dowels in it would have made it look like an armourer's repair. I thought about it but there was not very much material to put the dowels into. By the time I blended the profile of the grafted piece into the sanded body the wood tapered to almost nothing.

I believe that armourer's used dowels to augment the animal glue that they were using. I note that many patch jobs, the patch piece is dovedtailed into the parent material to give it mechanical strength even without the glue. Modern glues are much inproved. I have never had a glued joint let go yet, even when soaking wet.

I have worked with both epoxies and super glue. Both have their application.

Epoxy works great where there are gaps or perhaps some uneveness to overcome. Epoxy can also be tinted to match.

Super glue requires the surfaces to mate evenly with contact. Super glue is super strong, stronger than the wood fibre bond. I have tried to pull apart a glued joint and the glue didn't budge and I tore away fibres and made a new split.

If I ever do something stupid like dropping and chipping a stock, I will spend the time to find the little chip that came out. A dot of superglue on the chip, wiggle the chip back into place, and clamp tightly will make a repair that is in many cases undetectable.

I like the fact also that superglue with set in a few seconds. There are pros and cons to this. Epoxy allows me to move stuff into algnment before it sets.

My home is very fasionalble these days, I think the buzz word is an 'ECO HOUSE'. What that means is that I have no electricity other than watt I produce myself. The only power tool I have is an electric drill. Everything else is done by hand. I just take my time, lots of pratice trying to master the hand tools. I show off only my successes, I find that experience only comes by learning from my mistakes, I have had many failures too.