Will the wood be strong enough to use for the stock on my 416 rugby.

Bubinga is in the rosewood family. It's hard, heavy and oily, takes a nice finish. It has a tendancy to crack far easier than walnut. That tendancy will also apply to chipping.

I think it would be fine for a smaller caliber, might be to brittle for a heavy recoiling rifle.

Hi,

Open ended questions are difficult at best. Most all woods will stand quite a bit of recoil for a while, but.... There are many other questions to pursue before a decision on bubinga. Density, carvability, grain structure, stability, appearance, ability to hold checkering, etc. are only a few considerations. Talk with a few professional stock makers for their input. Many invaluable resources out there.

I have whittled a few stocks over the years and have never heard or read of one using your chosen species. There are many sources containing comparative charts of many attributes of world-wide species. There are myriad reasons for walnut as the preferred species for gunstocks--all the desired attributes. I believe your wood is spelled bubinga and your caliber would be Rigby. May help your searches.

Good luck with this.

Stephen

It's mostly found in the forests of Central Africa (Gabon, Central African Republic, Cameroon), rather than West Africa.

http://www.higginshardwoods.co...ltyhardwoods/bubinga

I used to hang around sawmills in the 70's when building schools in Central Africa, and there are times when the color is almost blood red, making for a very interesting color for a piece of wood. But I have never heard of a rifle stock being made of it, but don't know why it isn't done.

The Colt Sauers in 458 (African model) were stocked in Bubinga.

Biebs

You beat me while I looked up a photo.
Opps ! too big !!

I believe winchester made some heavy cal m-70's stocked in bubinga in the 1980's or thereabouts.

the bubinga i've handled is very heavy. heavier than most standard walnut. pretty, but heavy.

It has been used with a few rimfire benchrest stocks and with great success. Of course those aren't exactly heavily recoiling rifles...

Weatherby also stocked their big .460 Magnum rifles in bubinga wood, back in the '60s.

This place has bubinga stock blanks,
http://www.oldtreegunblanks.co...blanks.php?woodid=14
http://www.oldtreegunblanks.co...blanks.php?woodid=14
The ones I have seen were like these blanks, highly figured and very nice.

Mark

It is Bubinga.

Nice one on NitroX:

http://forums.nitroexpress.com...arch=true#Post172720

quote:

It has a tendancy to crack

In my view it is far to easy to crack.

I think Bear Archery used to use it on the risers of their wood bows.