Does myrtle wood make a good finished rifle stock? I have seen some very striking myrtle stock blanks but have been wondering how they are in terms of workability, durability, weight, and sturdiness. All of my experience up till now have been with various species of walnut so I was looking at myrtle as an alternative. What kind of stain/finish would work best with this wood? It seems quite a bit lighter in color when compared to walnut - could this be darkened somewhat?

Thanks in advance for any insights.

I believe Myrtle is a species of Hard Maple (someone will correct me if I'm wrong I'm sure) and it's quite dense and some of the blanks I've seen are very striking.....and not cheap at all!!!!!

I've never used that wood as I'd find it hard to walk away from a nice piece of walnut that is equally priced.....If you like it go for it....I wouldn't hesitate to use it on a very heavy recoiling gun either.

quote:

I believe Myrtle is a species of Hard Maple

I didn't think so. I thought it was the same as this. http://www.myrtlewoodgallery.com/what_is_myrtlewood.htm

But heck I have been wrong plenty of times. First stock I ever built was Myrtle. Mine was VERY hard and strong. It would handle anything I wanted to put in it.

Not a maple, but as dense and strong and rock maple. It is also known as pepperwood, laurel and bay. I cut some for firewood and others for lumber and turning wood. Weatherby loved it for his magnum rifles in the beginning cause of its interlocking grains and resistence to splitting or breakeage.

Here are both spalted and fiddleback myrtle.





P.S. it is as strong a stockwood as you will ever need. When dry it is amazing how the grain locks. I personally do not like the color, but that is my personal opinion and many cherish this wood. It smells great buring on a campfire unless you react to it!

quote:

Originally posted by ramrod340:

quote:

I believe Myrtle is a species of Hard Maple

I didn't think so. I thought it was the same as this. http://www.myrtlewoodgallery.com/what_is_myrtlewood.htm

But heck I have been wrong plenty of times. First stock I ever built was Myrtle. Mine was VERY hard and strong. It would handle anything I wanted to put in it.

Thank you Ramrod340.....I stand corrected

I've only done a couple Myrtle stocks,,,some claim it's unstable...I never was able to confirm that...It smells sort of like lemon when working...checkers superb! Pretty easy to work. Very fine grained and can de very striking in appearance. There's something called "Black Myrtle" which I've only seen twice..has black spots throughout...interesting wood.

I have made several stocks of myrtle. The problem with it is it can warp a couple of years after the finished stock is place in a rack. It has warped away from the barrel for no reason. It is fine for a two piece stock.

Wonderful to work, like soap carving. I have heard the concerns about movement and have no reason to doubt it. Those blanks I've worked with have been heavily fiddlebacked and, due to its lesser relative value, I've only taken on the perfectly quartersawn specimens which may explain my lack of complaints so far. I don't like the color, regardless. Staining didn't really get me past it but that's personal preference. I can send/post pics of a couple if that would be helpful.

Probably the nicest stock I have ever had was a Myrtle on a Pre64 Mdl70 Featherweight. Color was outstanding and finish was absolutely perfect. It was a presentation grade piece of wood. I have seen blanks in Oregon that were truly beautiful just as blanks. I like the wood much better than ANY light colored walnut. I particularly like the way it finishes and checkers. I rarely see it as much anymore as I did 30 years ago. I'd use a good blank in a heartbeat for anything. I had no trouble with changes in the wood but I live in sunny warm southern Arizona you might have more trouble in a damp climate.

IIRC, the Myrtle we're talking about is Black Myrtle. It weighs about 10 pounds more per cubic foot than Walnut, so the finished stock will be a bit heavier. I know it's hell cutting a Myrtle tree down.. I did it.. Once..

Don

I have made one Myrtle stock and had a devil of a time with chipping, or splitting away from a cutting tool. Had to be super carefull to keep a very sharp edge on the tool and watch grain direction. Never again, although the finished stock looks good. I think this wood has extreame variability in how it cuts, blank to blank.

I have two Myrtlewood stocks, first is a Winslow in .257 Weatherby which I bought in 1968, still lovely and still quite a shooter, BUT the wood has grown to be exceedingly expensive, unless you can drive to Oregon and pick it up at the source. My second is a factory second stock from Royal, picked it up in a sale several years ago, very striking patterns in the wood, although the stock itself is not a work of art because the machine inletting is way off center. However, I used the stock to build a custom camp gun in 9.3x62mm, making a "sows purse" sort of rifle that shoots like a dream. Myrtle is really gorgeous, hard, dense, well figured, and heavy. IMHO, it is a great stock wood, when you can find a good piece !!

LLS

I live here in Oregon and use Myrtle quite a bit. It works pretty easy as Mr Weibe and the others have said. Checkering is really nice too. The high quality blanks are getting VERY expensive and hard to get. The colors and figure vary from light to dark. Lots of fiddleback and swirly figure in the XX blanks. Kinda like Hawaiian Koa wood. I like it because it is fairly light and tough! I use lengths of HO railroad track in the foreends to make sure it doesn`t twist but have never had any problem without them either. I wish I had the knowledge to post pictures as I have some REALLY beautiful stuff. If anyone is interested and sends me a email I can respond to I`ll send them a pic or two.

Aloha, Mark

I built a stock from a myrtle blank this winter for a friend. It has everything for grain from one end to the other. Tight fiddle back except where there is either small bits of tight burl or mini quilt pattern. It checkered sharply at 22 lpi but the power cutter sure did throw some fuzz which set me back for a bit until I saw the lines were clean. It did have a couple of small bark inclusions which I had to remove and glue in matching pieces cut from the trimmings. Also, a big surprise when I was hogging out the magazine well when the Forster bit started to throw silver shavings. Found what was left of a 22 bullet in there. Somebody must have shot a squirrel on that there tree. Not enough time to see if there is any tendency to warp.

Owner wanted something personalized put on it so I cut a cross section of an old elk ivory tooth he had shot previously with the rifle, glued it to a dowel and shaped it round to fill the hole over the countersunk grip cap screw (after removing from the dowel). Old elk ivory colors come close to matching the wood grain color of the stock.

I have one other myrtle stock that is generally called tiger stripe I think. Long black streaks running with the grain on an orange/brown back ground. I've had it for 25 years and it has shown no tendency to warp, although the forend is hollowed out on an interupted pattern.

www.woodworkerssource.net will give lots of details. A NW coast member of the laurel family.

I have done a few stocks in it and will agree with what others have already said about it.

I will add that i am a certified nut for Juglans Regia and no gunstock wood i have cut on machines as nice but i love wood and there is some very striking myrtle out there but very rare and getting very hard to find.
It is my understanding that it grows in only two places, Jerusalem and Oregon.

One of the prettiest pieces of tiger myrtle i have ever seen....



forgive me for what i did to it!

quote:

Originally posted by DMB:
IIRC, the Myrtle we're talking about is Black Myrtle. It weighs about 10 pounds more per cubic foot than Walnut, so the finished stock will be a bit heavier. I know it's hell cutting a Myrtle tree down.. I did it.. Once..

Don

We often get Myrtle logs into our little milling project. Black Myrtle is just a slang name given to some of the heartwood that develops a black stain as it ages in the tree and the tree cuts nutrients away from the core. It is [Umbellularia californica], or California Bay, California Bay Laurel, California Laurel, Oregon Myrtle, Pepperwood, or even Headache Tree. This is the wood from the Pacific Northwest that was used by Weatherby and others for hard kicking magnums in the 70s and 80s. The wood is dense and excellent, but I do not like the color. It is the sole species in this genus. The best and most stable pieces I have seen were air dried for 2 years per inch of blanks and then kiln finished to 6%-8% overall moisture. I have also seen amazing flooring and furniture made from it. You commonly see burl turnings and tourist art in this wood locally and in Oregon since the development of burls is so common in this tree. I do not suggest burl in your gunstock in this species. the burl is very hard to dry and often checks over a number of years. The pieces I showed above give you an idea of the nice fiddleback/curl you can get from the species instead.

quote:

It is my understanding that it grows in only two places, Jerusalem and Oregon

The mid-east species is totally different than the PacNorWest as I discuss above. You are speaking of [Myrtus communis] the True Myrtle and it is a shrub in the Mid-East. This is the one discussed in the Bible.

As you can see from it's scientific name it grows all over California,but also in Oregon, and Washington. I am in Northern California and we have literally hundreds of thousands of these on the lands I work on.

333_OKH

Thanks for the clarification.

Don

Sorry if I went on and on and on. I have been developing a market for local hardwoods and finding thier niche. Myrtle/Pepperwood is one of them. It is a wood with great qualities and if someone argues its ability to withstand a magnum caliber, I would be happy to allow them to try and split even the young growth wood with an axe or maul. Interlocking grain and hard as the best maple.

It make great firewood too, it you need a serious heart attack trying to process/split it!

Myrtle is " Umbellularia californica " known by several slang or local species names .
Pepperwood , pacific myrtle California Laurel Spice-Tree to name most of them . Native to California & lower Oregon .

There are also other species of Myrtle such as Beech and Tasmanian Myrtle but not of the same geniuses though . All work well and make excellent just about what ever .

Shoot Straight Know Your target . ...

Two South Gate CA., FN Weatherby rifles. A .257Wby. top and a 300 Wby. Matching Myrtle wood stocks that have been seasoned with time and tung oil.

do the chips and drops make decent bbq wood?

quote:

Originally posted by jeffeosso:
do the chips and drops make decent bbq wood?

No!

The smoke is bad shit man!

THANKS...

then i hope none of it shows up in my shop!!

Jeffe.....are you saying that Walnut makes good BBQ chips?

Vapo,
somoene here told me it was... so i took some chips i cut off on the beaver, and made a smoker bag (brew bag, stuff with chips, held submerged for a day (bag in totally full 1 galloni bucket, then lids snapped on)) and chunked it in the firebox (of my brother in law's) bbq pit....

very nice, not as nice as hickory, but very nice

OK jeffe, I still never understood why guys in the heart of mesquite country want to try anything else. Trust me, walnut, pecan, hickory, or apple just ain't no better.

Besides, you should still have enough off that mesquite stock you turned for me to last a while.

Larry,

here's a funny thing.. i grew up in west memphis.. hickory is my body's "known" for good bbq... mesquite tastes like diesel to me

I think its too strong for smoking, too. Unless it is really lightly done. But for hot coals to grill on, its hard to beat.

I mainly use mesquite in the big smoker. Great for turkey. In a small one, I do "cut it" with pecan or hickory. Since the in-laws are in abilene, I get both mesquite and pecan pretty easily.

Besides, I thought it was more like kerosene.

Well far be it for me to EVER disagree or argue with the masters of BBQ . Texas BBQ or NC BBQ. or even Kansas BBQ. Even that Dam Tennessee has DAM FINE BBQ !. I personally can vouch for almost everyone of those states BBQ places !.

Peach Apricot Apple cedar sweet for poultry & Fish !. Almost any deciduous fruit tree makes wonderful chips !.

Meats in my BBQ get a mixture of Hickory mesquite and a touch of the afore mentioned chips .

We out here in Wonderland BBQ YEAR ROUND !.

Ever had this ?. Cut a few ripe peach's in half remove the stones . Grill skin side down then swab the grill with a light oil turn them over grill them . Now turn a quarter turn to ensure nice hash marks .

. Now set aside let cool for a minute or so not to long , skin the peach.
Put A little nutmeg and or cinnamon with a pinch of Brown sugar in the peach hole . Vanilla ICE Cream and there wouldn't be a lady that wouldn't after this desert !. I can almost guarantee it !.

Shoot straight know your target . ...