Anyone ever use either teak or olive wood for rifle stocks? I am just curious about these two woods. I know some military stuff has been stocked in teak, but wondered if anyone has first hand experience working with it.

The olive wood, well this stuff is real pretty. Lots of color contrast and hard as hell. Again just interested in knowing if anyone has worked with it.

Thanks,
Lucs

I've burned olive wood in my steam outbaord boat motor.

No experience with olive, but teak works like a normal wood, not too hard or anything. Main problem is that it can get expensive for a good piece, and another thing is that it has a natural oil in it that may interefere with a good long term recoil-resistant bond if it were laminated up into a gunstock. Wouldn't be my first choice I think, if I were to get a hunk of it large enough to make a stock out of I would probably sell it and use the money to buy a nice piece of something else. Probably have money left over too.

Hope you're keeping warm up there in Waterloo today! I'm about oh, 100 miles south and we got down to 3F last night, still only 10 here now.

I haven't worked with teak (or with anything else!) but I have a couple of target rifles with teak stocks. They do a good enough job for what they are, but they are very plain. They have no character for a nice hunting rifle.

[ 01-23-2003, 21:54: Message edited by: Stu C ]

I have a couple of planks of Amaranth (Purple Heart) that I thought I'd laminate via the Acrabond method. Not much figure, but good ammount of fiddle. Hard, dense wood. Good stock for wet climates. And big bores. Starts off purple and turns chocolate over time. Supposed to checker nice if you use carbide cutters.

On ebay from time to time Cookwoods out of Oregon sells some stock blanks out of exotic wood. Have seen Rosewood, Cocobolo, and currently a couple from Bocote, which is a really unusual, hard, and really HEAVY wood from Mexico. Have no idea how they would hold up under recoil or how stable they are.

Most of the exotic woods make nice pistol grips and thats about it...Teak is too hard, too heavy and prone to splitting and breaking for rifle stocks... Rifle stocks should be regulated to only Walnut of the hard shell varity IMHO....

I just looked at some 'figured olive wood' in the form of pen blanks, at a woodworker's store today. It seemed heavy, dense, and hard, like one of the S. American or African exotics. I don't think it would be a good stock wood just because of weight. I have also noticed, in non-gun related woodworking, that the heavier / harder a piece of wood is, the more brittle and prone to splits and splintering.

I think the best use for these woods is in forend tips (nice), and fancy grip caps (shudder). I saw a pic of a dark claro stock, with redwood burl tip and cap, that looked really nice.\

Just my $.02

Todd

P.S> I will admit though, that I have thought about a stock made of wenge. It is an african wood, very dark grey / brown with black stripes that are usually very regular and even. I've never seen a figured piece of it, but the color and stripes are interesting enough. It is hard, but not quite as heavy as other exotics.