Feat of the Week: Stock Repair
Welcome to our weekly blog post! Each “Feat of the Week” features firearm(s) we have worked on recently. These are showcases of our repair work, custom machining, Cerakote, or a combination of services. We are excited to share our gunsmithing feats with you!
This week’s feat is a Savage stock repair. This is a common service we perform and is one of my favorite repair jobs! We are excited to tell you more about our process and how we learned the techniques. So let’s get started!
Right: Chipped Stock (Before)
After: Repaired Stock (After)
Stock Repair
The Repair Process
Customers bring their stocks to us for repair for a couple reasons. The first is that stocks are expensive. In particular, this stock costs at least $750. Comparatively, our stock repair service is around $400. Often, too, the stocks are unavailable for purchase because companies don’t make them anymore. In the case of this customer, even if he wanted to buy a new stock for this gun, he would be unable to.
This customer’s Savage shotgun had a large part of the stock chipped off next to the receiver tang. This is a common problem for several other guns including the Browning A5 and the Remington 740 series. It also often happens to rifles with two-piece stocks—they need to be reshaped regularly to compensate for the recoil force but often go unmaintained resulting in cracking and chipping.
If this ever happens to your stock, please, when you bring it to a gunsmith, keep the chunk of wood that comes off. That will make the stock repair service much easier. This customer didn’t bring the missing piece from his gun so I had to salvage wood from inside of the stock. This ensured that the wood used to replace the missing chunk matches the original stock.
I took the butt plate off, and, using a chisel, carved out a piece of wood to fit the gap where the wood had broken off. After removing the necessary material, I cleaned up the bottom of the stock before putting the butt plate back on.
I sanded down both the stock and the new chunk of wood so that they fit together. Then, I glued the newly salvaged piece to the stock. This piece was just a tad bit larger than the missing piece which allowed me to sand it down to the proper size.
With sandpaper, I began to shape the new piece of wood to match the other side of the stock. This is a process that doesn’t involve measuring tools or power tools—one reason why stock repairs are one of my favorite jobs. All shaping, measuring, and matching is done by eye. And all of the work is done with hand tools and sandpaper.
Then, in order to make sure the new piece of wood blended smoothly into the original stock, I hand drew and carved matching woodgrain. This is done with a fine point sharpie to mimic the look of the grain. To finalize blending the new piece of wood completely into the stock, I lightly sanded the wood. And finally, to complete this stock repair job, I refinished the entire stock.
Learning the Techniques
While at Trinidad State’s Gunsmithing School, I was lucky enough to learn stock making from Glen Morovits—one of the best stock makers in the country. He has thirty years of experience in the industry and is also a charter member of the American Custom Gunmakers Guild. Now, Glen runs the new gunsmithing school at Eastern Wyoming College.
Stock Duplication
In his class, I learned a lot of important techniques and processes. One of my favorite projects in college was making a stock from scratch. Starting with a blank, I cut the wood roughly to shape and then used a stock duplicator. The rest of the process involved time, patience, and a lot of sanding.
Glen also taught us how to fix small chips while we were making stocks. This is the same technique that I employ for large stock repairs now. Over time, I used Glen’s technique for small repairs and applied them to bigger and bigger jobs such as this Savage stock repair.
NEXT UP
We hope you enjoyed this week’s gunsmithing feat. Thank you for following along! Our next feature will be posted Monday, December 14th at 9am. Comment for any content you want to see.
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