Question on gluing broken stocks together.

[45man]

Accra Glass has been my standby and when I need a pin I run a brazing rod through a die with a drill to apply some threads. I only pin when I can hide it and once the stock is glued and hard. Wrap with inner tube bands or surgical tubing to make the crack invisible.
Long ago guys loved Plastic Wood to fill spots but it is junk.

 

[Zonie]

Speaking of Plastic Wood, here is a picture of the 1842 Springfield I bought. Someone, a long time ago decided to replace the missing wood at the rear of the barrel with it.
Not only does it look like manure but after years it started falling apart.
I removed the Plastic Wood and smoothed out the entire area so I could glue a new piece of walnut in place to rebuild the whole area.

With the new wood in place it looks like this:

 

[Carl Fowler III]

I agree with you totally about using wood glues like Titebond...used this on a split stock and it's lasted years!

I'm probably going to be pretty much alone with these opinions. Enneyhow....de-oiling is not necessary. As others have pointed out the oil finish is mainly on the surface and penetrates very little into the wood. Where the break happens is clean wood. Personally, I would NEVER consider the use of epoxy, CA or Gorilla for such repairs. Use wood glues (they were designed for use on wood). I prefer Titebond II. Some might prefer TB III as it is more moisture resistant. But the TB III leaves and ungly dark glue line. If you clean up very well that might not be a problem. The TB II leaves an essentially invisible glue line and is very strong. Also many/most gun stock breaks can benefit from the use of pins (I like brass or brazing rod) for strengthening. Some do not like the looks of the pin ends but, to me, they are OK as they tell part of the story of the guns life.

I

 

[Artificer]

I would theorise that if the wood broke due to some accident like someone sitting on a rifle I would be happy to use a dowel to restore original strength. However, if the stock broke during normal use suggesting it was too weak to start with restoring old strength may not be enough. Something much stronger (like a piece of metal) may be required.

Either way, I wonder how all our epoxy and metal rod repairs will be viewed 150 years from now. Will people be happy we've done that and saved rifles they would never see or will they wish we never did it? If I was repairing a really nice historic piece I would've probably preferred wood glue, wooden dowels etc, but in a not very valuable rifle any method that allows one to use it well is good for me.

A real mechanical engineer who knew a LOT about firearms once told me about the problems of "dissimilarity of materials" for construction and wear. This is why I won't use an Iron or Steel threaded rod or screw to repair a cracked wrist in a wood stock and at most will use a brass threaded rod coated with Acraglas.

It is quite possible with modern made repro's that one can get either a piece of wood with improper grain run out or the wood is just too soft. When my Brown Bess wrist shattered, the best thing I could figure was the wood was too soft. In that case, I don't think even a straight grain piece of hickory dowel rod glued into the wood, would completely cure the problem with that stock, let alone just using glue by itself.

Gus

 

[Ironoxide]

I managed to remove all of the old glue and I have two large and 4 small pieces now. All of the small pieces come from the left side of the wrist. Now I have a dilemma whether to simply put all this together with acraglas and reinforcing rods as I planned or use a new piece of walnut instead of multiple small chunks. Strength-wise I have no doubt gluing all the chunks with acraglas and using brass rods for reinforcement will work, but visually I'll have multiple cracks filled with black glue visible. If I used a new piece of walnut there would be only two joints that could be made quite small.

However, I never saw any video or an online article where someone would repair a wrist of a gun stock by using a new piece of wood. All "new wood" repairs I saw seem to be similar to one shown above by Zonie. They involve parts of the stock where it is fairly easy to attach a new piece of wood. I'll have to think about how likely am I to succeed shaping a new piece of wood to match the contours of existing pieces. I'll probably do a test run trying to shape a piece of cheap wood before making a final decision.

 

[Artificer]

Ironoxide,

When using wood as a patch, it is more important to get the grain AND the flow of the grain and or figure to match than it is the color to match. You can always stain a lighter piece of wood to match that otherwise matches in other respects.

When using Accraglas and a wood patch, you may be able to get away without using extra pins that show through on the surface of the wood. You do this by using what I call an internal Dutchman Butterfly patch of Accraglas inside the repaired area. I hit on this idea years ago when I had to replace a rather thin piece of missing wood on an M1 Garand front handguard.

In case you don't know what a Butterfly patch looks like, it sort of looks like an Hourglass shape. Here is a link showing one kind of such a patch in the second photo, though those are done on the outside, rather than inside the wood.
https://woodworking.stackexchange.c...etween-a-dutchman-patch-and-a-butterfly-patch

You have to or carve out the inversed "sort of triangles" on both the stock and the patch so when Accraglas is used to fill up the spaces you carved out, it forms the internal butterfly patch, when the Accraglas cures. Besides the adhesion of the Accraglass, it thus makes an additional mechanical joint to keep the wood patch from coming out. On thin wood patches, you just don't make the carved out areas too deep and ensure there is room above the outer areas to file/sand on the patch, so the Accraglas doesn't show through. I have successfully used this technique all over gun stocks and the patches don't come loose.

Another tip to match a wood patch is to use artificial graining on the wood patch. I picked up this tip when I visited Andrew Jackson's home back in the 1980's. Jackson hired a French Artist to artificially grain all sorts of wood all over the Hermitage. Though they most often did it with Iron Gall Ink, I just use a Very Fine Point, Black Permanent Magic Marker. That way I can "add" figure to the wood patch, if needed. I also add some additional figure or lines from the wood around the patch and continue those lines into the patch, thereby helping to hide the edges of the patch.

If you think you need to be a true artist to use such artificial graining, I can assure you that you don't. I can barely draw good stick figures and with very little practice, I was able to do the technique so most folks don't realize I did it, after I stained and oiled the wood. On a couple of patches, I've even drawn in the rest of tiny knots on the patch that were at the edge of the wood around the patch. OH, if you make a mistake, a little acetone on a Q Tip will get rid of most of the Permanent Magic Marker Ink.

Gus

 

[Artificer]

Oh, one more thing about using an Internal Butterfly Accraglas joint. On really thin pieces of wood and when you are carving out the internal triangle, you need to stay well inside the area on the wood patch when the patch or outer edges of the patch are really thin. IOW, don't try to carve out the material near edges and especially thin edges. Fortunately, I thought of that before the first time I used this technique on the lower edge of the M1 front handguard, where the total wood on each side at the bottom is very thin when new. That rifle with that patched handguard was fired many hundreds of times and the thin wood patch in the handguard never came loose.

Gus

 

[Gene L]

A good woodworker or anyone with patience and basic (or probably above) can repair a stock....I think epoxy was used in the two examples I've seen, one on my plains rifle. You can't see where it was glued back together.

All Arisaka rifles had two-piece buttstocks because the blanks weren't wide enough for one peice. I imagine they used hide glue back then, or casein. In time, they tend to separate.

A lot of them have held together for 80 or more years. So casein, especially, will work...no stronger than hide glue, but it's less affected by moisture.

I would think about any modern wood glue would work for stock repair. If you want to go traditional and period correct, hide glue is your choice. Hide glue is very strong, but a PITA to work with. And the stuff you buy at the hardware store isn't really hide glue.

 

[Ironoxide]

Thank you for the advice and please continue

I decided to at least try to make a patch that would fit in the break so I roughly cut it on a bandsaw and I then tried a method I know from metalworking. I deposited soot on the patch then I touched it to the piece of wood where it should fit and tapped it few times with another piece of wood. This would make an impression in soot showing high spots which I removed with a small ball shaped cutter in a die grinder. Using this method I managed to make the patch fit with a fairly tiny gap, now I have the other side of the patch to fit.

Does anyone know a better method of fitting a patch? Yesterday I spent 3h at it and probably I have to spent additional 9h (with a smaller ball cutter). I considered cutting original wood to simplify the fitting by creating straight surfaces, but I decided against it as I don't want to weaken the wrist any more. Also If the resulting patch looks worse than the alternative I would like to have the backup option of using the original pieces. This is why I'm trying the patch to fit existing irregular surfaces.

 

[bpd303]

A penetrating oil just as effective as Kroil is a 50/50 mix of acetone and automatic transmission fluid.

waiting to have Kroil shipped here),

 

[Ironoxide]

A penetrating oil just as effective as Kroil is a 50/50 mix of acetone and automatic transmission fluid.

Great info. I'll definitely test it Few days in acetone loosened all the screws. I suspect at least those holding the metal around the barrel wedge were probably never removed from new.

As an update on the restoration I've draw filed the octagon part of the barrel. Now I'm polishing out filing marks with 600 grit sandpaper (using the file as backing). I'll also be polishing the round part of the barrel. This is something I didn't plan for, but if I don't the difference may be visible after bluing.

Regarding the stock, I finally got acraglas and I now know why people like it for such repairs. It is supereasy to put it where it needs to go or to block it off an area with wax. I used the release compound on metal parts, but I also filled all voids (like where the trigger engages the seer) with wax.

I also made a 13 inch long quarter inch thick drill bit by tig welding it to a piece of stainless threaded rod. This is a photo showing the stock after gluing with the drill ready.

I drilled a hole from next to where the barrel breech usually is through the wrist and halfway into the back of the stock. I glued in a 10 inch long stainless threaded rod into it. I also added a screw that grabs the back of the trigger plate with its head bedded with acraglas underneath the tang. Between the rod, the screw, the long tang and the trigger plate I think this stock is almost ready to handle big bore recoil.

I initially planned to sand only the wrist, but I managed to get acraglas fingerprints everywhere so I decided to refinish the whole thing. This is how it looks like now:

I'm pretty happy with it so far.

Next I'm going to remove shallow bits of acraglas from few larger cracks with a needle-sized chisel to fill them with a wood dust mixed with shellac. Allegedly this mix is supposed to take color same as the rest of the wood.

 

[bpd303]

Looks like it is coming along right nice. I use Acraglas all the time for repairs.