I was cruising the pages of the commie conspiracy and ran across these. They are not mine and I don't know anything about them, just thought I would get the experts thoughts on them.

Auction 1

Bastogne

Certainly not an expert, but the Bastogne blank is very nice. Lots of figure and I like the grain structure. I also like how it's over-sized; should be able to have it made into a nice stock. I've seen some serviceable blanks on E-Bay over the past couple of years.

You know what they say about one man's trash . . .

Agreed, that second blank is something special.

Both look pretty good from here.

Thanks for the links..

Don

I'd be concerned about all that pretty grain in the forends of those blanks. For my tastes I'd like straght grain from the wrist section foreward.

However those are a couple pretty pieces of wood never the less!

well they definitely aint plastic or plywood

What's the minimum thicknes you guys like to see? Is that first blank at 2-3/8" thick getting a bit thin to easily work with? How thin can you go for a bolt action? With cheekpiece? Levergun 2 piece? SxS?

Ive been watching this auction for the bastogne, and at 5 or 6 more days of bidding left, it will go for a preminun price i'm sure. It looks to be a very nice blank, maybe too nice. Better be some extra nice metal work around it to justify all that flash, even then it may get lost in the wood. The only problem with fleabay is you have to hope the guy with the blank knows his blanks and the discription is right. I've seen soom nice ones, but i've also seen a LOT of junk being described as exibition grade, easy to say these days...but is it really? This blank looks to be right,and i'm told that Bastogone is a superior wood... is it?

Well terms are all relative , so superior to what ?. It's nice looking wood as is most Walnut , some are better than others depending on the individual piece .

Some of the finest blanks I've ever seen personally were Juglans Regia or as most people refer to it Circassian Walnut .

While working as a Hardwood purveyor the world over , I saw some of the worlds most beautiful woods . Several of which defy description , they simply have to be seen to be believed .


Bastogne

Bastogne Walnut, the rarest of all walnut woods, is a natural cross between California English Walnut and California Claro. Bastogne trees grow very large and the wood is always denser than the two parent trees. Since the trees are not cultivated and only grow naturally, they are very rare. Bastogne trees are sterile and can not reproduce. They can not be reproduced in a lab as the only stock available to work with is sterile as well. Natural occuring trees are the only source. The color contrast is that of the brilliant colors of Claro and the dark streaks of English.


Juglans Hindsii
Discovered and named Hinds Walnut by the British botanist Richard B. Hinds in the mid 1800s. Hinds, California Black and Claro are the three names used interchangeably for this West Coast Walnut with Claro being the most commonly used.

The origin of this tree is somewhat of a mystery with some believing it a native tree planted from its original forest home into early Indian village sites in the Northern California valleys, while others suspect it may have originated in Turkey or Greece.

The name "Claro" probably is of Spanish influence coming from early California history when the Catholic padres were building the west coast missions. The word "claro" in Spanish means bright, which can certainly describe the wood. For with its depth of colors from yellows, reds, browns and greens with purple-black streaking, to its radiant feather crotch and fiddleback, it certainly has a brightness and beauty which no other wood can match.

Juglans Regia
Circassian, English, French, Persian, Turkish are some of the many names used to describe this same wood, primarily differentiated for geographical reasons. The origin of the California Walnut we call "French" dates back over 2,000 years and was originally brought to Persia and Italy from the Far East. The conquests of the Roman Empire initiated the spread of the nut and tree to England and eventually throughout Europe. Early English settlers brought the tree to California in the 1800s. However well traveled, this walnut, with its dense strong grain, ease of machinability and exquisitely rich figure is by any name unquestionably the most highly prized of gunstock woods.

Because the trunk and root system of Claro is better adapted to local soil and climate conditions and is less susceptible to disease and insect attacks, it is widely used by the commercial nut plantations as root stalk material on which the desired French/English strains are grafted for nut production. Due to this grafting technique, after many decades of growth, we can actually produce blanks of these two completely different woods—Claro and French—from the same tree.


Shoot Straight Know Your Target . ...

I must be missing something.....isn't the grain forward of where the stock wrist would be fairly straight? I realize there are some vertical markings, but it looks like the actual grain is reasonbly straight. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
That being said, I have a Win Mod 70 Classic stainless action that I'm thinking about a big bore kicker....404, 416 Ruger, etc. Would this blank work for such a project? Thanks.

Gary
DRSS
NRA Lifer
SCI
DSC

IMO the top blank is ok at best. The bottom one is too flashy for my taste. After having built a couple of guns with "crazy" wood I've decided less is better when it comes to figure.

Terry

quote:

Well terms are all relative , so superior to what ?.

Balsa Wood!

The bastogne blank is pretty far out, never seen one with that much fiddleback. I like it but I also tend to agree with Terry, less is often better.

The pics of the first are poor unless I'm missing something to enlarge them. The second one is great if that kind of flash floats one boat.

Two and three eights is almost a "extra thick" blank by some standards. I try to keep two and a quarter as my minimum for a rifle with a cheek piece. I'm a amateur and need as much as I can get.

Doctor K

thank you for sharing that bit of info





Cal30

Now, i think i'm missing something, besides a couple of loose screws... i know there laying here on the floor somewheres!

Isnt grain and figure two diffrent things,and you won't be able to see the grain in pictures. I had a gunsmith teacher who was anal about these two terms, and while not as anal, they are not the same. Having said that and by no means am i any kind of wood expert, is there a way of telling grain flow as opposed to figure from just a picture. Say some kind of... Rule of Thumb?

They are different, although somewhat related, and it is easy to see the grain and figure on the bastogne blank. The layout on the bastogne is excellent IMO. It would make a helluva stock.

The first one, due to poor picture quality, is much harder to tell on. What you're seeing is mostly figure.....it kind of looks like the grain layout is good, but I'd want a closer up before I paid that much for it. Generally figure follows grain, but not always and especially with English (Fench, Turkisk, Circassian) it can be deceptive.

Yes ; GRAIN ALWAYS RUNS PARALLEL TO THE RIFLE !.

Without going all technical and getting into vessel, fibres , axial parenchyma , ray parenchyma and the like . Most figure lyes perpendicular to the grain , such as fleck ray fiddle back figure . It can however turn with the grain in certain characteristic cuts of some woods . Such as Knees ( natural Bent stock )or burl stock .

Grain runs the direction of the vessel .This refers to the general direction of growth of the woody tissue .

Grain can be straight,spiral, sloping,interlocked , curly , wavy or rippled .

In the use of wood for firearms stock ( except hand gun grips ) .

It's ALWAYS running or parallel with the firearm , never perpendicular to it .

Figure describes ornamental markings seen on the dressed surface and is produced by arrangement of various wood tissues and the variation in color . Fiddleback , ribbon , striped , burl , birds eye .

Color in wood is extremely difficult to explain as several factors are involved including location and soil mineral content .

Shoot Straight Know Your Target . ...

So, what would be a (ballpark) cost of turning one of these into a fully inletted stock (and recoil pad)?
Peter.

if you gotta ask, you can't afford it

quote:

Originally posted by Peter:
So, what would be a (ballpark) cost of turning one of these into a fully inletted stock (and recoil pad)?
Peter.

Somewhere between $1000.00 to $6000.00, recoil pad extra!

Prices range wildly on stock work.

Terry

quote:

Originally posted by Peter:
So, what would be a (ballpark) cost of turning one of these into a fully inletted stock (and recoil pad)?
Peter.

It all depends on the quality that you want. If you want as close to perfection as is humanly possible, then I agree with TC1's estimate.

If you don't need perfection, and you have a bit of spare time and a few tools, you could do a respectable job of getting it inletted yourself after you had the blank turned to a pattern by any one of a number of folks who do that work.

In that case, to have the blank turned would be somewhere south of $200.00. Obviously you would need a few tools as well.

I have done a few that were very suitable for the purposes intended, and if I can do it, so can you.