Thought it might be fun for some to see the process we went through to mill stock blanks from a 6' Bastogne trunk. My good friend (and stock making mentor) acquired this tree in CA--felled it in pieces (with the help of the landowner's crane!) and brought back 1/2 of the first 7' section of trunk to mill up this winter. We'll head back to get more wood this Spring. I know this is old hat for many members but I had no previous experience laying out and milling blanks from the round--quite an experience. We used a Stihl 066 with an Alaska mill (thus the Redneck part). I know that using a bandsaw mill would have saved us the kerf the pieces were 32" wide, green,and hell to handle. Plus its nice to work at home at your leisure. There is not as much dark wood as we would have liked but the fiddle back in this tree is absolutely spectacular, especially in the light wood--these stocks are going to be beautiful. Here's a pic of the largest piece after we were about half done with it:
Milling a 3" slab. Although it doesn't look like we're maximizing the quartersawn wood by taking this slab, the grain of the dark wood turns and after studying the piece for about 3 three beers we decided that this was the wisest cut--the layout of the dark wood turned out well:
Here's a closeup of one of the slabs prior to laying out and cutting blanks:
And a couple of the early balnks (we ended up with over 40 good ones from these pieces):
Anchor sealed the ends and any imperfections...It's going to be a LONG three years watching these dry!
Jay Kolbe
Posts: 767 | Location: Seeley Lake Montana | Registered: 17 April 2002
You could send the blanks down to my place in Lake Elsinore Ca for drying . Its Hot and dry 90-100 degrees over 6 months of the year. And it hardly ever rains
Have to cut up a burl stump of walnut the other day and could not use such a mill. Free hand with the chainsaw! WOW! It was a lot of work. I will show the wood soon.
Posts: 3284 | Location: Mountains of Northern California | Registered: 22 November 2005
Snowcat, Thanks for sharing that. Isn't it amazing how incredible the wood gets right next to the sap wood. It is almost teasing you to go for it. Most of the time you never can include it but when you can, it is amazing.
I did some chain saw blank trimming once and learned a lesson and now leave it for those with the equipment. I have cut a lot of blanks and never ever got one that was even near the one you display. It has always been a good hard labor but ended up with a pile of mediocre blanks. You started with a much better tree but you never know.
Enjoy. BTW, Seeley lake is such a beautiful place. This old Thompson Falls transplant is very envious.
Hey Chic- As you can see, much of the wood is whitewood-- "sapwood" I always thought of as the extreme outer growth layer and not appropriate for stock use. Is there any reason the white wood we have is less desireable for stocks (besides color)? It's noticeably lighter than the dark but still very hard and dense and the fiddle in some of these pieces knocks your socks off. I have several blanks that are perfectly laid out (I mean PERFECTLY quartersawn and awsome grainflow) and with that fiddle think that they would make great stocks. Why is the light wood structurally inferior? Also, I spend several weeks a year working in the Thompson/Fisher north of Plains and have really come to enjoy the country--very rich wildlife wise though the amount of wolf sign I saw last year was troubling. Makes it a little too easy to swing in on Dennis Olsen also....
Chic, GSP, other stockers...My partner in this is a good friend of Jerry Fisher and was up there yesterday and noticed that many of his high dollar blanks were not perfectly quartersawn. If the layout is otherwise good, how important is endgrain layout to the overall performance of the stock? Seems some stockers are more concerned with it than others.
Does anyone have any references for books about milling trees for stocks? We were limited by first having to break things down into somewhat manageable chunks first but I have a friend with a large bandsaw mill and for later pieces could use that.
Thanks for the help.
Jay Kolbe
Posts: 767 | Location: Seeley Lake Montana | Registered: 17 April 2002
Ihad a sap wood blank once that was cut from an English log. It had just enough heartwood so you could tell what it was. It had a light colored feathered crotch and made an awesome blank. I have never seen any strength reports on just sap wood but I suspect that it would be very adequate for a stock.
The amount of pure quarter sawn blanks are very limited in any tree. You often have to take the good with the bad. If I was building a heavy recoiling rifle, I would want quarter sawn. Slab sawn can makes some dramatic rifles and shotguns also.
Good Grief guys, you don't REALLY believe all that white wood is actually sapwood? Sapwood is just near the exterior. The white wood is heartwood that is light in color and this is quite common in English and Bastogne walnut. There is no difference in strength or density and it makes great stock blanks...just light in color.
Thumper- I think thsi is a semantic issue--the white wood we have here, though lighter than the dark, is still very hard and dense. I have heard that the high mineral content and slightly denser grain pattern accounts for the increased dark wood weight. This Bastogne is very heavy wood, period. Since this is all I have to work with for a while, I'm glad that some blanks are lighter than others for lighter recoiling arms. Glad to hear that you think it will make great stocks, we have a ton of it and it looks beautiful.
Jay Kolbe
Posts: 767 | Location: Seeley Lake Montana | Registered: 17 April 2002
Beautiful, and if the other side is laid out similarly it looks like upi have the makings for a spectacular 2 piece--either the upper left or lower right portion should get you a great forend. I have one piece of burl that I'm waiting on (saving for a 99 in 358 Win.) How dry is it? Planing it down to 3" should save you a year of torture...I cheated some of mine down to 2 1/2" just so that I could get going that much earlier. I may even rough out something in a year and a half or 2, leave lots of material in the inletting and barrel channel and let it sit that way to speed things also.
I'm jealous of that burl wood, want to do some horse trading?
Jay Kolbe
Posts: 767 | Location: Seeley Lake Montana | Registered: 17 April 2002
The backside ofthis blank has a bit of 'live wood' or sap and bark area where the burl turned inward. It will make an honest 3 inch thick peice of wood. If a matched pair of blanks os a premium, I have several of these that will turn and honest matched 2 3/4 inch pair each.....
This will need a lot of air time to dry, but what will a stockmaker pay for Claro of this kind?
333
Posts: 3284 | Location: Mountains of Northern California | Registered: 22 November 2005
SNOWCAT ---- Show us some more of that wood you were cutting up !!!!
Here is a better look at the test peice out of claro wlanut I cut from the first slab. It is 6.5 inch on the small side, 9.5 inch on the butt side, 4.5 inches thick and 18 inches long. I will actually reduce its thickness to 3 inches later due to a small burl/bark intrusion on the back side.
Posts: 3284 | Location: Mountains of Northern California | Registered: 22 November 2005
Check out Auction Arms. When this gets dry i will sell it there unless I have other offers for the lot. Auction Arms has a new portion of their site up for a test to sell blanks.
Use some water and wet the wood and take another photo of it in the daylight. I would like to see that.
I think you would do better on Ebay. Often it is a lot better place to sell than to buy. Auction fever really gets to people on ebay that do not know how to bid. I use Auction Sniper and let it bid for me at the last moment at a price I feel is the best I want to pay. You can figure that price when there is time to bid. When the thought of someone "taking" your treasure from you, common sense often goes out the door.
Customstox speaks with wisdom, 333_OKH. AuctionArms has about one one-thousandth the viewing audience (or less) of eBay. There will be many who might want it for some purpose other than a gunstock that would see it there but not on a gun oriented site. Use mutiple catagories when you list it so it gets to the gun nuts and the other wood workers.
"Experience" is the only class you take where the exam comes before the lesson.
Posts: 11142 | Location: Texas, USA | Registered: 22 September 2003
When I get a chance I will take more pics of that blank. I will also pattern and cut the rest of the slab this one came from. After that I have 6 more slabs from the same tree. The slabs a kind of thick so some of these blanks will get ripped in two and produce matched sets.
The pictured blank is enough wood for a 2-piece stock and almost for two, but there is a little birl/bark area on the back side. It will make a solid 3 inch thick blank when ripped.
Posts: 3284 | Location: Mountains of Northern California | Registered: 22 November 2005
Unfortunately, Bastogne takes as long to dry as Claro and black walnut...about 3 years with another year after that for stabilizing. English only takes a bit over a year to dry in my desert area with another year to stabilize. But the wait is worth it. Bastogne as a very dense wood is fine for big game rifles. It often won't balance out a light game shotgun unless you hollow it out. It works like black or Claro...not as machinable as English. But beautiful wood.
