ash wood

[Bartek]

I want to build a simple Kentucky rifle, without wood engraving and inletting. It will be first rifle made by me.
I have no any experience about gun building . I did it never befor, so i want to build this rifle to learn all skills in practice. It is my main aim.
I have many ash wood. It has very good condition and very nice looking grains. Has any one of You used an ash wood to make rifle stock? I'm interested specilly in finishing. I want make it dark-brown, but with good marked grain. So what finishing and stain should i use? I will be thankful for any answer :hatsoff:

 

[Treerat]

Get the grain running through the wrist and forestock right and it should be fine. Louiseville Slugger makes baseball bats out of this stuff so it should be plenty strong.

 

[djnye]

concerning staining.

i am a black ash basketmaker and use swabbed aqua fortis all the time to very good effect. the swabbing allows for the color to show outside, but not inside the basket. the color is a very pleasing medium to dark brown. i swab and then oven bake for about ten minutes at under 200 degrees.

ash tends to be a very straight-grained wood and once dry is very stable and propably would be very seviceable. however, since it is a ring-porous wood you might want to use filler during coloring and finishing, depending on your process and tastes.

in my opinion there is hardly anything prettier than nicely figured black ash cabinetry. may be the closest thing we in the states have to chestnut today.

take care, daniel

 

I would go for it. Ash is beautiful grained wood, and will make a fine gun. As has been already said, have the grain follow the wrist as much as posible. It would be good to keep it simple to show off the grain. For building the first time, the fullstock is much easier than a halfstock. How hard is it going to be to get parts over there, are there any suppliers of Muzzleloading components. Bill

 

[Roy]

I have made one gun from ash. Having the grain show will not be a problem. The piece I used was curly ash and sort of had a checker board look to it when I was done.

 

[doverdog]

Here is a picture of a gun made by a friend, using ash for the stock. It makes for a rather striking gun. Not all ash will have the vertical grain, so you may have to sort through a number of blanks before getting the right one. Curly ash is a lot less common than curly maple.

 

[Roy]

Beautiful craftsmanship. Do you have a pic of the lock side?

 

[donk]

I have never made a gun stock out of it but I work with white ash quite a bit building cabinets and chairs and such. It works very much like oak. As said before it is an open grain wood so to get a smooth finish you may need to use a grain filler or just build up many layers of finish and sand between coats. It is very hard and very stable and should make a great rifle stock. The Fender Guitar company made some of their most sought after Stratocaster guitars out of ash back in the 60's because of it's beauty and stability. Good luck with your project.

 

[doverdog]

That is the only picture of that gun I have. As I recall, it is a .58 caliber.

 

[Zonie]

Bartek: You say you have no experiance building guns, and perhaps you understand what was meant by "Get the grain running through the wrist and forestock right " but in case you don't, look at the picture and notice how the long grains stripes are running parallel with the shape of the narrow area of the stock (wrist).
This is how it should look.
Some stocks have been made with the grain running parallel with the barrel. This makes the grain at an angle to the wrist. If the wood is at an angle to the wrist, it will often break there.

If you can buy stains from America, there are a number of brands available. I would suggest that you use an alcohol based stain, thinned with alcohol. This allows you to apply multiple coats to get the darkness you are after.
Alcohol based stains also do not raise the grain (making the surface fuzzy).

I hope this helps you.

 

[hawk]

I have made tomahawk handes from curly ash .
And have plans to make a pair of dueling pistols also. The grain is out standing .
I used tung oil to finish them.
:hatsoff:

 

[Bartek]

What a beauty rifle... :bow:
Can You send me few pictures more?

Thank You all very much for precious tips :hatsoff:
I think, i will be really lucky, if i will not completely destroy my stock wood :haha: