Beech stocks...

[amadeus76]

Aside from the obvious and subjective aesthetic appeal of walnut stocks, is there a real reason Beech was only used when war time shortages made it necessary? I've heard some say that Beech warps more easily. Is there any truth to this?

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[Peter Laidler]

I'm not so sure that beech does warp more readily. We continued to use beech up until the L1A1 rifles.

[browningautorifle]

Walnut was the standard because of it's reliability in that role for nearly centuries. Other woods were needed due to shortages that developed...

[Brian Dick]

Beech and birch are easily as good of a gunstock wood as walnut.

[browningautorifle]

Beech and birch are easily as good

Guess I said it wrong, I didn't mean they were inferior.

[Flying10uk]

Did the seasoning time required have anything to do with the choice of woods used as well as what woods were readily available within the British Isles? Were the woods used for U.K. military stocks during WW2 seasoned in an oven or was there sufficient wood available that had been seasoned in the traditional manner?

[Mk VII]

They tried kiln-drying it but it wasn't all that successful and still tended to warp. Previously large quantities had been seasoned out of doors under cover in the usual way.

[Frederick303]

An old stock maker I knew years ago told me the Howe (1939) was the source to go to read everything you needed to know about blank preparation, drying time stock perpetration and stock sealing. A few comments I seem to recall below, in no particular order. He had worked at Jaegers in Jenkintown or learned his craft there, back in the era when this was one of the great shops of the US. In any case as a young fellow I got to listen in on a discussion with this guy at camp Perry on the relative merits of direct wood bedding vs plastic/fiberglass bedding, my interest at the time being dictated by match rifle bedding (M70/M700 actions and M1 rifles).

1) Kiln dried wood does have issues with shrinkage. There is still more moisture in the deep wood than desired. As that changes you can have warping, especially in the forend once finished, as the wood is basically not done drying. Best solution is to allow such wood to try another few months in the attic. (This much I have seen and can verify to be true with Boyd M1903 inlets stocks)

2) Properly dried wood is pretty weather resistant once the end grain is properly sealed. By that he meant that a properly dried wood stock would absorb some moisture in wet weather, but shed it again when once conditions settled. It would not warp. in the get wet/dry cycle, even if soaked, if properly prior prior to final inletting. I seem to recall one of the older chaps I knew disagreed with him and there was a spirited debate on this point based on various military stocks that had been converted to sporter stocks, his point being the end grain was not properly sealed, the other chap felling a lot of M1903A3 stocks would warp due to incorrect quarter sawn blanks and there was nothing you could do to fix it. Actually I might have that backwards, he might have said it was a incorrect blank cut and the military stocks were crap because of that, not sure of the exact details, just a lot of M1903A3 stocks were problematic.

3) I seem to recall on long mannlicher mauser stocks how the walnut blank was cut mattered to the end result. I seem to recall you could tell by any warp after drying the blank if it was a good candidate for a match stock or not.

3) I do not recall the exact method but I seem to recall there was supposed to be a final 3~4month dry period between rough inletting and the final inlet, this being on Mauser based s[porter stocks with a tight fit of the barrel forward of the action body. The stock blank would shrink in that time, or so I seem to recall.

4) He thought the SMLE bedding system as possibly the worst ever invented, but he was a US gunsmith and I am not sure he understood it, though he gave a detailed analysis of why it was bad, though I recall none of it except the nose cap metal to metal contact was a bad idea.

5) Walnut comes in many grades, the less dense walnut is not as good a wood as properly cut Beech or Birch (not sure which). Walnut that grew up in a moist environment was not as dense as Birch from cold climates.

6) He felt that the older rifles with the popular light weight barrels of the 1950s/6os shot a lot better with a good direct wood bedding job than a glass bedded job, had to do with the damping of dense black walnut.

7) The AMU technique of epoxy impregnation into M14 stocks was practiced by gunsmith before that, albeit by heating properly dried stocks, and placing the epoxy/resin on the recoil surfaces and then allowing the cooling stock to absorb same. The technique went back at least to the 1950s.

[mrclark303]

My brother-in-law is a violin maker and sources and matures his own wood blanks.

I discussed the subject of rifle woodwork warping (particularly with a view to War time mass production) and he he launched into the details...

Well I was lost in minutes quite frankly. Such a complex subject.

I showed him a wartime No4 forend I have that's typically warped and twisted to the right, he took a look, explained about the poor cut, somthing about the direction of fibres in relation to the cut and a very clear lack of maturing was mentioned I think...

I often wonder if the reason you see so many replacement forends on FTRed No4's is because they were found to be warped when removed from store.

After all, many of these rifles were originally manufactured with a mix of the deepest austerity and absolute maximum output...

[Flying10uk]

One can understand why the Germans switched to laminated wood stocks, in the late 1930s, for their K98s.