It struck me that I am about a month and a half away from the anniversary of my decision to get off my butt and finish a bunch of projects. I retired in 2008, and had collected piles of parts and wood blanks for projects that never got done. I decided to seriously work on them and complete some. Below are the ones I have (or almost have) completed in the last 11 months or so. If I finish up a few details by mid October, I will hit an average of one/month. I spent about four months during the last year in Florida, so I only worked on stock finishes while there. Got to slow down now. I am running out of space.

Sorry about the pictures, but they aren't great.

Here's a bad shot of all of them laid out for pictures:


This one took the longest, and just finished. No 1 in 300H&H, half octagon half round, express sights, modified Talley Mauser bases, French Walnut which was reclaimed from a battlefield shortly after the war ended. I will likely get some Ruger mount quick release mounts and have them CC'd.




Springfield 240 Weatherby, basically a classic express rifle.



Another Springfield, 30-06. Picked up for $225 in a gun shop. Great metal, like new barrel, shot well. Bought a really butchered factory secod stock for $45. Did a ton of patching to get it here. Plan to whack off the rosewood and do ebony. I think it will be a really nice rifle then.



This is a Chilean mauser which had been NATO reworked to 308. It was unclaimed at a gunshop. I got the action, bare with no bolt, for $45. I had a spare 7 mm barrel, and an old leftover Fajen stock. I removed the side panels, added Niedner butt and cap, trigger, and bottom metal in 7x57. Probably have less than $500 all in in the gun. The wood is really much nicer than the pictures show. It is a dark fiddleback in person.




Not a rifle, but this Ithaca 37 was made the same year I was born. (I have an NID double made the same year, also restored.) Both are 16 ga. I had a new Simmons solid rib and reblue, then turned the stock and finished. The blank had some flaws I had to fix (which you can see) but the color and grain was just too pretty to abandon.



Also did a Browning 16 Ga. This particular gun was a ShotShow special. Had a really plain oil finished stock, which was called Grade III wood. I restocked with a slightly better piece of Eastern Black




This is a 6mm BR on a Charles Daly Mini Mauser. Douglas barrel and Fiberglass/Kevlar stock. Modified the 22-250 action to work with a 250 savage, but it could only handle 100 gr bullets at the maximum mag opening.





Restocked 9.3x74. This walnut actually came from Turkey directly.


This is really a parts gun. I had a decent Turkish mauser. I also had a NOS Swede carbine barrel (6.5x55) I bought when Numrich had them for around $25. I bought a mannlicher inlet from Richards (about the only game in town). I literally removed over 2 pounds of wood from the blank before I finished it. At that, it still looks a little heavy. It is actually light, and I used an original Steyr Mann stock as a guide, but now that the barrel is blued it looks a little bulky still. Interestigly enough, it looked great before blueing. I think the front step in the barrel does it. Before blueing, the stock stood out and you just saw the stock lines. Now they are both dark and look "one of a piece". If I did over, I would taper the barrel from the first to second step. I think it would look a lot more "airy". I think the mannlicher is the toughest thing to do right.


Cadet in 218 Bee. I rebarreled, made a scope base, and added a new forearm.


Almost done. Crappy winchester 94, had a piece of English not big enough for anything else. Had a lot of sapwood so I got it for $25 on eBay. Added new 24" barrel from Numrich, shortened mag and mounted to dovetail to do away with bands, added Pewter cap from some Centennial, need to finish reciever and finish sight mods.


This is the reall oddball. Almost done. This was a Companion 410 shotgun, which Beretta and others built. Action is literally inches thick and strong as an ox. I drilled the monoblock and stubbed in an octagon barrel in Bee. Added front sight ramp. Bushed the firing pin and modified. All it needs is to TIG the extension on the extractor, solder the forend lug on the barrel, and blue and add scope bases. I had already practiced stock grafting on it ten years ago. Added the back of a No 1 stock to improve its looks.




That's it for right now. I still have four jobs in the works.
Restock a No 1 450/400
Build a 280 AI vz 24
Finish a VZ24 425 WR
Finish a plain jane 458 Winchester.
I am planning on taking the first three a little slower, as I really want them to turn out nice.

I will say that I learned more about stock finishing in the last year than during the last 30. The later stocks are definitely better. I am tempted to go back and work on some of the earlier ones some more.

wow...that's versatility....and it all looks great!

Nice work!! I love ruger#1's

I didn't mention, but I don't do blueing, CC work or checkering. I have tried my hand, and it ain't me!

Nice stuff!

I like them. A lot. The Ithaca could be my favorite... I've shot some pheasants with my dad's old Deerslayer and it is a sweet shotgun so seeing one treated that well is nice. Do you have any photos of the blank you used for that gun before going to work on it?

Sorry Evan, but I don't. It was a nice enough looking blank, but a lot of the grain showed up as I turned it. I really didn't pay much for it, as it was pretty small. I bought it from a furniture lumber dealer instead of a gunstock dealer.

One thing I have noticed about stock wood is that if you keep your eyes open, you can sometimes spot a deal. The stock on the No 1 300 H&H I bought for $45 in an auction. The sister piece of wood had been used to restock a Lefever Optimus by the owner, so I knew it had to be pretty special. This blank didn't look like much, but I noticed that the wood was perfectly flat cut, which often really improves as the curved gunstock is formed. In this case it did.

The other thing I have found over the years is that, with black walnut, it is almost impossible to determine stock color from a blank or rough planed piece of wood. Some light looking blanks will turn almost black when hit by finish (particularly Claro), and some will not change at all. Fiddleback or flame grain will sometimes even look much lighter. I tend to like the color of English or a light color like on the Ithaca. For that reason, I seldom will start cutting on a walnut blank without actually fully sanding down a patch and rubbing on some finish to get a real idea of what it will look like.

The 300 stock had an interesting story. As it goes, the wood was cut after world war II from the remains of an old walnut grove destroyed by battle. A local gunsmith then put it up to dry. Sometime in the late sixties, it was acquired by a gunshop and put on the shelf. Much after that, in the eighties, a man who had an Optimus to restock had asked a friend going to Europe to scrounge around and see what he could find. The two blanks were purchased and shipped to him. He used the best one, then put the other up. After all the years later, he decided he would never use it and listed it in an online auction, where it got almost no interested because the pictures on the auction site looked so bland.
A lot of oral tradition mixed in, but it is supported by notes that were on the stock, and it was all related by the participants, one to another. Anyway, whether all true or not, it is nice to think of the enormous amount of history that can sometimes be unknowingly tied to guns.

Very nice---LOVE IT when old friends are given "nice new clothes" to wear! In many ways this looks better to me that a 30k full blown engraved custom commercial 98!

hey - if you have a scheme on how to get off your butt and finish some projects, please send it to me i need it badly

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Originally posted by butchloc:
hey - if you have a scheme on how to get off your butt and finish some projects, please send it to me i need it badly

copy me on that too!

Actually, I did two things to make the work go quicker. I tried to scedule the work, so that I was working on multiple stock finishes while waiting for blueing to come back, did several trigger guard shapings while the mill was tooled up etc. It sometimes seemed slow, but then I would finish several at once.

I also tried to make myself work at least a little each day, and tried not to skip over a couple of days in a row without doing a little something. The other side of that is that I tried to back off when I got a little too wound up about it. I tend to be on the obsessive/compulsive side of the aisle, and have to guard against burnout. While I was working, I would get all wound up, buy the stuff for a bunch of projects, spend all my spare time on it for a while, then burn out and not touch anything for six months. I have a lot more control of my time now, and can pace myself. I get a lot more done in the time I alot to the work.

I also decided to bite the bullet and try to have the tools I need. I have always been a tool junkie, but I don't spend tons on them unless I have to. For instance, without doubt, the sinle biggest holdup over the years has been getting stock duplication done. (I don't understand why it takes 6 month to get a basic woodworking service performed, yet there is almost no one who does it.) I ended up buying a cheap duplicator, and it really sppeded up the whole process on the last few stocks I did, even though it required more work on my part.

quote:

Crappy winchester 94, had a piece of English not big enough for anything else. Had a lot of sapwood so I got it for $25 on eBay.

They all look nice...I really like this one, nice find!

Enjoy!

What stock is that on the Mini-Mauser? I've got one in the works and like the lines on it.

It's a Bell and Carlson. I've used them on every plastic stocked rifle I made. I think the weight is generally OK, and I have had no problems on any thing I used them on, up to a 416 Taylor. I have never seen any cracking, loosening or creep, no matter what the recoil. I glass be the front ring, lug, and shank of the barrel and it is good to go. The only one I have had a complaint about is the Ruger No 1. It is heavy as crap, but did fit good. Since I bought it for a varmint model, it wasn't a real problem.

I had to custom order to get the paint scheme. I can't remember who I got it through, but delivery was about 3 weeks from order.

Great work! I share your taste in rifles and guns and these turned out beautifully.

I really like what you did with your Model 1894 Winchester.