What methods do you use for plugging holes in stocks before refinishing? There's commercial wood putty,
drill and dowel, make your own wood putty from sanding dust from the stock, or plug with colored acraglass.
None of them look very good. And the holes are usually from some clutz's attempt to drill a hole for a
sling swivel and it is usually off center and too high or too low on the butt stock. I have thought of and
rejected boring a centered hole and fill with something so it looks intentional. Or cover with a brass
emblem or something. Everything seems to draw attention to the defect. Any suggestions??

biggest problem with putty and dowels are they have no grain or it goes the wrong way. You can get a plug cutter at a woodworkers store. It allows you to cut a plug from a piece of the same type wood with the grain going across the hole.

OK, the hole is there and there it will stay.

I like to plug holes with wood. For me, using sawdust from the same piece of wood looks more obvious than a plug made from a different piece of wood. What you can do is fill hole with sawdust and glue about 1/8" low, and shave a chip from the barrel channel to put in there, but to me it always jumps out, so I just deal with it.

Fill it with wood putty a hair short, like mark says, hit it with "burn in" filler (see www.grizzly.com") and that is what it is.

Like mark says, it's there.. you can make it tolerable, but it IS done

jeffe

quote:

Originally posted by Old Elk Hunter:
...And the holes are usually from some clutz's attempt to drill a hole for a sling swivel and it is usually off center and too high or too low on the butt stock. ... Any suggestions??

Hey Old Elk Hunter, You need to make Lemonade out of that "Lemon Hole".

Go on and drill it out. Then plug the Termite Food stock hole with a snug fitting small bottle of Chlordane. That way you can take the bottle out and wipe the stock down with the Chlordane any time you want.

Hotcore,

I've been in the Carolinas and can understand your preference for termite control. Out here we have more
wood ants. About three times the size of a termite. I haven't seen any metal eating termites so I think the
stock is safe in my vault. So all those bullet traps I have seen on fancy gunstocks are really termite traps?!?

quote:

Originally posted by Old Elk Hunter:
...I haven't seen any metal eating termites so I think the stock is safe in my vault. So all those bullet traps I have seen on fancy gunstocks are really termite traps?!?

Hey OEH, Yes indeed! Good place to store Chlordane soaked Patches.

Those "wood ants" don't sound real fun either. Maybe we could send you all some Fire Ants to work them over with.

Metal Termites - You probably know the closest thing to that is regular old critter Blood. It even chews on Stainless if it is on it long enough.

I apparently got some on my hand long ago and then placed my hand on my Stainless Ruger's Security Six Grip. A bit of the Blood worked it's way between the Hogue Grips and the exposed Stainless. I noticed it that evening as I came in, but by then the Blood had etched the Stainless where the Grips snug up.
---

By the way, I managed to get a fairly deep but short gouge on a Termite Food stock maybe 45 or so years ago. My "Sneaking" ability wasn't as good as it is today and rumor has it all the Deer ran out of the County due to the noise when I got hung-up by that root and fell into a piece of fence.

Anyway, I was wondering if I needed to do anything about the gouge and buddies(?) started noticing it. Decided it did need something done.

I had an NRA tie-tac and decided to inlay it into the stock over the gouge. It was along the bottom edge of the stock, so I had to put a slight curvature into the tie-tac to "mostly" match the stock conture at that point.

One of the Elders told me to use a very sharp short blade knife to remove the wood. He showed me on a scrap piece of wood and that was a great help. I can't remember for sure, but I think I just used regular old glue to hold it in place back then.

So, it came out OK but not great. I'm sure some of the Termite Food stock makers could have done much better, but we pretty much did with what we had back then.

Best of luck to you on the hole.

The problem with patching holes is that you can always see them if you look, and to me they always look like a attempt to fix a mistake.

So for me I look at the hole, its not going away, and I start figuring how I can mask it so it looks like I wanted it there. I varies on every rifles and where the hole is. On the fore end a ebony diamond inlayed into the stock can look pretty good, especially if your checkering pattern can be worked to complement it. If its a hole from rear sling swivel, changing from a bolt swivel to a double screw type can hide bugger ups. Another method is inlay German silver, depending on where the hole is that can cover up a hole.

I have seen some holes and there is just nothing that is going to look good, cutouts for rear peep sights on the side of the stock are particularly bad, right in the side of the stock, no real way to hide it.

When none of the above works out, the suggestion of a plug cutter and matching the grain is correct. I would take this a step farther though, look to refininshing your rifle and use a masking type finish ( the goop they use on CZ rifles comes to mind ) once you have fixed the hole then the finish hides most of the ugly.