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Blank sawing example.

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Here is a rifle I just finished. It really shows the difference in the way the blanks are cut. One way it really glows and the other it looks spotty. Too bad it wasn't rotated 90deg. before cutting. However, it was free piece of wood. Shouldn' t look a gift horse in the mouth.



New .40cal. rifle A 007.JPGNew .40cal. rifle A 006.JPG
 
In the early 1970's when modern m/l gunstocking got going , John Bivens was one of the folks chosen to make the famous "Bicentenial " series of American longrifles. John made the statement that the perfect longrifle stock blank should be "quarter sawed" , so as to evenly display the vertical striping in the finished gun. And so started the search for figured maple wood , quarter sawed. The quarter sawed stock blank might not be the most practical of blank selections for a couple reasons. In thin wristed highly figured stocks , there is the least amount of strength in a "vulnerable to breakage" application , the wrist. Quarter sawing leaves wood grain running flat to the longitudinal axis of the rifle. A lot of highly figured wood is hard , and also brittle making the finished rifle vulnerable to wrist breakage from shock , such as dropping the gun , etc.. Some would counter that a $4000+ rifle from the 1970's was made to look at and not be mistreated , so what , if the wood was mechanically a poor choice.
In the utilitarian sense, any stock blank sawed w/grain running vertically to the long axis of the rifle will be stronger than the quarter sawed blank. Does this also indicate the non quarter sawed blank gun will be ugly ??? Not so in the least. Over the years , many stocks passed through my hands , of very fancy closely striped wood. The one pictured above is an excellent example of a fine piece of wood. My complements. I'll walk from a Quarter sawed blank any day for the other choice. w/o a doubt , hands down , free wood is the best.
Looking at old original rifles , the old timers were not as selective in , how ran the grain through the wrist. They seem to have been more interested in simply having a piece of wood to make a gun.. Luck to ya. ....oldwood
 
Over the years I have built 15-20(?) rifles. Because I am hobby building(cheap wood is better than expensive wood), I usually don't pay much attention to the wood. This one is just a good example of sawing differences. This piece of wood is about 35yrs. old. I had a Bivins rifle for many years, and finally sold it to a man who was friends with Bivins and wanted one of his rifles.
The old timers were in the rifle production business. They didn't cull anything they could sell. Given a choice I would go with the good grain flow in the wrist, but in small calibers I don't think the grain flow in the wrist makes much difference. As long as the rifle can move with the recoil it should stay together. A rifle shot with the butt against a tree might break in any size caliber. I have read of rifles being broken at the wrist in shipment because they were dropped on the butt end of the box without enough packing there.
Here's a broken rifle story. Frank Bartlett shipped a rifle to a customer that was broken in shipment. He told UPS it needed to be restocked, and he needed the hardware off the old stock plus it would cost $1500 for restocking. So, they let him keep the gun. He then proceeded to build another rifle and repair the broken one. He sent the both rifles to the customer. One paid for by UPS and one by the customer. A twofer deal for sure.
 
EC...........I never got to meet Frank , but my hunting buddy , Fred Miller showed me some stocks he shaped and or inlet the barrels , and r/r holes for Frank over the years.
Talk about "free wood"... Fred never made many errors , but there was one afternoon I walked into his shop , he was out of sorts. We did our business , and as i was about to exit the shop , he mentioned I should take the stock standing in the corner before he cut it up for the wood stove. Somehow , the r/r bit surfaced up into the barrel channel. Stock had beautiful curl, but a patch of crooked grain in the for end. Fred had drilled hundreds of r/r holes , and even he was occasionally defeated by some bad grain. I took the stock................Free wood.........oldwood
 
Because of the way maple trees are made, with the (preferred for gun stocks) sap wood on the outside(s), and taking up roughly 1/3 per side (of the tree--1/3 sap wood, 1/3 heartwood, 1/3 sap wood in cross section), it takes a mighty big tree to be able to yield you enough clear sap wood to accommodate all the drop at the toe a LR stock needs (particularly if you want a quarter-sawn blank). Of course, the tree / wood naturally has a bend to it if you dig down in to the stump and the root ball and that can help, but digging out the stump is a lot more work to get at the wood than chain-sawing the tree from the part that's above ground.
 
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