How are gunstocks cut out?

[McQualude]

I have seen pin router duplicators that can duplicate existing stocks, but how are custom stocks carved/cut?

[Andy Dingley]

Roughed out with a copy lathe using a router head. Then a range of Microplanes (one of those "super Surforms") to shape it.

Bandsawn to a profile, then similar.

Drawknife, then spokeshave.

There are many other ways too.

-- Information wants to be free. Data fancies being tied up and spanked by Troi.

[Henry Bibb]

How is the inletting done? I've got this old side-plate LC Smith, and...

Henry Bibb

[Andy Dingley]

You get a 1930's copy of "The Modern Gunsmith". Two volumes, one is general gunsmithing, the other is everything you might ever want to know about stocking.

(except that the shotgun fitting advice is a bit duff, if you're used to English guns)

[Tim Douglass]

Slowly and carefully, by hand. There are a lot of specialized chisels, scrapers and rasps just for stock inletting. It takes a ton of work to do a good job. Someday I'll give it a try.

Tim Douglass

[Swingman]

My Dad and I did a walnut stock for an old 218 Bee some 46 years ago when I was about 14. We cut the blank out using a handsaw, a spokeshave for the rough shaping, an assortment of wood rasps and lots of sandpaper and elbow grease ... entirely done by hand, and still a beautiful stock, with carved cheekpiece, to this day. IIRC, we may have got the thrust of the idea from a Popular Mechanics article.

We took turns hunting with that rifle until I quit hunting about 20 years ago. Every time I see it now I can almost hear the songs that were playing on the radio in the barn shop at the time ...

[goonair]

carefully, and with skill dervied from practice.

[McQualude]

No kidding, really? I thought they just fell out of the tree trunk like all woodworking projects.

[Greg]

Gunstocks are cut on a pattern lathe.

[Andy Dingley]

Sounds cheap. They're a fairly common book to find, but they usually go for a bit more than that, especially a pair.

Are yours signed ? It's one of those odd books where the unsigned copies are the rarities.

-- Do whales have krillfiles ?

[McQualude]

thanks