Stock making characteristics of paper birch?

[Canuck Bob]

I have a source of ten year old air dried paper birch milled here in Alberta. It is superb strong hard clear quarter sawn lumber at 2" as sawn, natural slab sided.

What shaping and inletting characteristics can be expected. My idea does not involve carved ornamentation or prized figured wood. Just outstanding stability and strength. Finishing will be fairly primitive and dark, think tribute to a general store late flint or conversion rifle.

 

[necchi]

I think tribute to a general store late flint or conversion rifle.

Uhm,, what lends you the idea that Paper Birch was used in the historical "late flint or conversion rifle" period of firearms?

 

[Canuck Bob]

I am trying to understand frontier gunsmithing. A broken stock in Fort Calgary of the North West Territories of that era had only birch as a source of hardwood suitable to fashion a replacement stock with. There was no Fedex or TOW then just wagon, carts, canoes, and river boats pre railroad (1880's).

It is my theory that the first gunsmiths were blacksmiths and carpenters likely associated with first the HBC posts and then the towns that followed the NW Mounted Police who manned the fort and others in the region. Repairing broken stocks from horse accidents must have been prevalent. The first two business' in Calgary were a bakery and the HBC.

The firearm influences would be the HBC north west trade muskets, surplus military, American trade rifles, plains buffalo guns, and guns carried in with settlers.

Besides I've read where birch was a common enough stock wood during the active years of muzzleloaders. Nowhere as prevalent as Maple or English Walnut but still used, is that not true?

 

[dave_person]

Hi Bob,
White birch is pretty strong wood with specific gravity and hardness similar to red maple and a little weaker and less dense than black walnut. Silver birch was widely used in northern Europe for gun stocks but it is harder and denser than white birch. I am sure, if you can get a plank from a sufficiently large birch tree, you could make decent stocks. However, I would not be too sure that stock wood wasn't readily available at HBC outposts and there may have been trained gunsmiths available at those posts hired by HBC. In the time required to cut and air dry a birch log (years), your local HBC post could have had many English walnut stock blanks shipped in. More likely, you took your broken gun in, they swapped you a new replacement on credit to be returned or paid for later when your old gun was repaired or salvaged.

dave

 

[tenngun]

I don’t know if as said any one was available at an HBC post to restock a gun or not. However in the south east USA there were Indian gunbuilders who were doing repairs and replacements of broken stocks with local wood.
If there was birch wood avalible I don’t see why a post carpenter or black smith could not have used it to restock a gun.
Would they have? Is another question. I fear the metal drives of both world wars ate a lot of ”˜poor boy guns’ and left the cream of the crop to survive. So we end up with a predator trap.
On the other hand their absense could be explained by them not being built to begin with.

 

[Col. Batguano]

your other issue is that having only 2" lumber, that will leave you precious little extra wood to work with, as most butt plates are at least 1 3/4" wide, and up to slightly more than 2" for some of the heavier calibers. If you plan on a cheek rest that too can present layout challenges. That said, most of the plainer guns of the period were probably made without cheek rests.

The gun companies of today use birch a lot because it is cheap and plentiful. Since most of the stocking is done with pantograph machines, there is very little individual hand fitting going on, so labor costs are a smaller fraction of the finished product cost than they are in much more expensive finished products.

 

[dave_person]

Hi,
It was common practice at HBC posts to have armorers and sometimes, gunsmiths at their important posts. If you look at Blackmore's "Gunsmiths of London" you will find many, many gunsmiths, armorers, and locksmiths that worked overseas for HBC all through the 18th and 19th centuries. HBC had a good reputation for quality and service among traders, settlers, and indians throughout Canada. Moreover, frontier people and indians traveled long distances to buy guns and powder and get their guns serviced. The bulk of the work done by the Moravian gun makers in Bethlehem and Christian's Spring, PA was servicing guns of indians from PA, Ohio, Virginia, New York, and even Michigan. That changed after the Rev War.

dave

 

[Canuck Bob]

That is enlightening and this post is going in a very interesting direction. I started this muzzleloading hobby in guns thinking only about the actual guns. Now the historical context is equally interesting.

The Alberta history is keenly divided between pre and post railroad. The enormous pemmican trade in the south of Rupert's Land to feed the canoe brigades represented the pre period and rapid colonization and farming the prairies the second post railway.

It turns out birch makes a fine stock and this is about trying a plank build. My buddies birch will work well for something probably destined to be firewood. Some searching revealed some nice looking refinished stocks. It also turns out he had the sawyer cut some wider flitches than 8/4 for a couple of long benchtops he never built.

 

[B.Habermehl]

I bet you could build a really cool trade gun using birch. Especially if your doing a representation of a restocked gun. Or a period of emergency gun like some I’ve seen here in the US. BJH

 

[rich pierce]

“Birch” as a hardwood used for furniture is yellow birch, not paper birch. Paper birch is rarely large enough to make good stock blanks and is not as strong or hard as yellow birch.

The idea that major outposts depended primarily on locally sourced materials has limited documentary support, outside fort building materials. Big ships outfitted most forts, and there are numerous records of garrisons starving when supply ships failed to arrive on time. This reinforces their dependence on outside supplies.

 

[Canuck Bob]

I have to agree with the idea of trade goods and resupply through distant sources. However the Forts in Western Canada were small and really HBC posts not military establishments. Also their is no large ship access to the region in question. We are just north of western Montana. I've decided to focus on the 1830-70 era. The HBC Rupert's Land authority rather than the North West Territory and Canadian authority. The history post-HBC is very complex and lands right in the heart of the cartridge gun revolution.

It also seems the huge numbers of trade guns delivered over 200 years and the relatively scarce numbers now speaks to most broken guns not getting repaired I now suspect. They were probably a source of parts or smithing iron. I've much to learn but finding it fun and a refreshing break from tv.

 

[tenngun]

I have heard that paper birch used to be much larger, however such pressure was brought on them by over harvesting we just don’t have as many large ones today. I wonder if old heart wood would have been stronger

 

[dave_person]

Hi,
Paper birch is an early successional species meaning it requires full sun and no forest canopy to get established. During growth it must reach a dominant position in the forest canopy or it dies out. It comes in after fire and disturbances like clearcut logging that remove the forest canopy. For example, the vast stands of mature paper birch that exist today in northern Minnesota were established after most of the white pine forests were logged. Like most early successional species, it is short lived. It is mature by 60-70 years and rarely exceeds 100 years. It suffers greatly at maturity from rot, insects, fire, and competition from other trees. In time, it is usually replaced by other species in the stand so large, dense, "old growth" paper birch is and has always been a great rarity. Even mature paper birches rarely exceed 10" dbh (diameter at breast height or 4.5' above the ground to those not trained in forestry). There are records of rare trees up to 30" dbh but they were never common. So the tree rarely existed in stands containing trees with large boles and have not been getting smaller over time particularly on lands not being actively managed for timber.

dave

 

[rich pierce]

Spoken like a forester. My undergrad was forestry. Paper birch was not considered a timber species. In a pinch could someone whittle a gunstock from a paper birch log? Probably. I’d just as soon use red spruce in a pinch.

 

[Canuck Bob]

This wood comes from a hardwood floor mill who takes special orders. I'll check it carefully but I'v got a number of flitches to sort through. This lumber is some of the nicest wood I've seen harvested locally. It comes from the region of Rocky Mountain House, a famous trading post. However I'm now concerned about flitch width. I don't want any pith wood and the stack makes checking width hard.

Alberta forest is in my blood and using local lumber from a small mill operator honours them in my mind. My family homesteaded north of Lesser Slave Lake, near Grouard AB, in 1930. Lots and lots of english, french, and metis folks directly descended from the fur traders.

After the war two of my uncles were career Forest Rangers. One retired as Director of the Northern Forest. Another uncle ran a saw mill in Salt Prairie on the homestead. It still cuts well with a model T engine. My fondest memories of the homestead were horse logging as a teen and grandma's cinnamon buns baked in the original cabin's stove. Grampa grew up real hard in the logging camps north of Sault Saint Marie.