What do you all use to fix tang cracks on mausers? I have one that need done. I have seen them done with bedding compound. What about elmers? How is this fix preformed? thanks
Aaron

The best ways I know of are to heat some Acra-glass, Micro Bed, or 24 hour epoxy with a hair drier until it's very thin, like oil. Fill your cracks with it, and force it into the crack with you thumb, or you can drill a small hole into the crack on the inside of the inletting where it won't show, and force the glue into the hole. Then you push a broken off toothpick into the hole which will force the glue all through the crack. One other way to get it into the crack is with an air compressor, but it can be a little messy.

Fill the crack and close it up with any kind of padded clamp that will work. On some cracks, you can't close them up at all, so you'll just have to settle for filling.

Alcohol on a rag will clean up the ooze before it hardens.

Elmers isn't strong enough. However, super glue is, but you'll have to apply super glue every 10 min untill the crack fills. And super glue will always run out over your stock finish and require a touch up of even a re-finish. If Your talking about the same stock you were talking about in the "oil soaked post" don't worry about the refinish. The actone will strip enough of the finish to need refinishing anyway. Do the soak first, and the repair second.

Good luck

There is a variation on Buchsenschmied's method that can be used if your local laws and pharmacies (or vets) will accomodate. I use a hypodermic syringe with Acraglas with about a 19 gauge needle. I drill small holes, about #60 drill (IIRC) using a Dremel tool. Acraglas is injected with the syringe. Like B. said, heating the Acraglas will cause it to flow. Other than that, my procedure is identical to his. I never use Acraglas for whole bedding jobs anymore, but it sure is handy for a lot of other things. Good luck!

I had a 45-70 M-1917 split vertically right behind the receiver. I felt some reinforcement would be good. I used my Dremil to make a horizontal slot in the tang that went across the split. In the slot I inserted a piece of steel. The steel was about 3/4" wide and about an inch long. It was a piece of thin flat stock. I drilled it with a multitude of holes, making a honeycomb. I filled the stock cavity with glass bedding compound and seated the steel piece in the glue. To hold the crack completely closed I wrapped the stock with surgical tubing, this is much better than any normal clamp. My repair was invisible. After fixing the crack be sure and relieve the tang or it might happen again.

Aaron_Rust,



This is a photo of our 577 T.Rex rifle stock. You can see the break on the grip, and another one was just ahead of the magazine box.

We fixed them by drilling holes across the crack, and putting brass screws in. We filed teh top of the three screws as you can see, and the two ahead of the magazine box were left as is.

This might be a bit more than you want to do, I just thought of showing you one way of doing this job.

Good luck.

Saeed, were those cracks from the recoil or just from hitting the floor so often?