Unusual stock woods.

Just wondering what unusual stock woods you have come across, other than the perhaps more common maple and walnut.

Apple wood - On an original muzzle loader.

Pear wood - on a modern built hand made muzzle loader.

Elm - One on an old muzzle loader rebuilt from parts in antiquity and skillfully made scaled for a small boy, the other on my belgian .410 double - definately someones "restock attempt"

What have you come accross.

I have a heavy (14 lb) target m/l roundball rifle, that was built in the 1950s, that is stocked in locally grown cherry. It is very straight grained and plain............ but it is a shooting machine with the right load. A gift to me from the widow of a dear departed friend who built it.

Also have an old Husqvarna Mauser Sporter in .220 Swift that is stocked in "Arctic Beech", according to their literature. However, that is a generic term used for some of the Husqvarna stock wood of the 1940s, when my guns as made. The wood is actually European beech, Fagus Sylvatica. Light colored, and kinda plain, but seemingly very stable.

SRH

Only seen one unusual wood used for a AYA side by side when on holiday in Spain. Olive wood the grain was, I will go as far as beautiful to look at but the timbers heavy weight took all the shine off. The new stock work was all the work of the guns owner, and a fine job he made of it to right down to the drop points.

Beech is commonly used a lot in air rifle stocks over here and sometimes turns up on lower end shotguns too.

I have always wondered about olive wood, often its for sale in shops when you go to spain and similar countries where it is commonly found, i have thought about bringing some back to try as a stock wood its always beautifull but quite often cracked and knotted, its density makes it exceptionally heavy and i cant see any advantage to using it, on a heavy barreled gun it could bring the weight back between the hands if done well but it think it would add a lot of weight so as to make a gun very much dead weight and not at all lively.

Thinking over this topic brings to mind two other woods.

I once saw a beautifull piece of indian rosewood, highly figured and french polished to stock an old BSA air rifle, it made a very beautifull stock, however well figured rose wood is hard to find particularly in large pieces.

Another wood i have seen; again in the air rifle world was a quite exemplary piece of "Olive Ash" - a cover all term for wildly figured and coloured ash which somewhat resembles the colour and figure found in olive wood. Myself i have used some very nice ripple/fiddleback ash for tool handles and decorative work. I would imagine that it made a very reasonable stock - early musket stocks were, i believe often carved from ash.

Conventional suppliers of wood near me seem to have exceptionally high prices for exceptionally uninteresting stock.

I had a M14 stock made out of Sycamore at one time. It was pretty plain looking and had small fish scales but it took pure tung oil nicely. I remember seeing an Abercrombie and Fitch marked Mauser stocked in African Mahogany.

Yama wood. Buddy stocked a rifle with it back when we were in high school. Looked like a laminate to me, but was very light...Geo

I have a large rifle sized blank of Osage Orange. Very hard and heavy, I thought I'd use it for a target rifle when I cut it in the '60s.

I have a model 98 in 338-06 AI(barreled by PO Ackley) that has a rosewood stock. My friend that stocked it got the blank from Herter's. I'm not sure if it can be imported anymore, given Gibson's problems with Holder et.al.
Mike

Mesquite was quite popular for a while. If you look at the Gun Digest annuals from the 60s and 70s you'll find mesquite stocked guns in the annual custom guns section.

Hard and heavy is an understatement. I had some old osage orange that was in blocks cut from a large tree limb.........about 7" in diameter. We had a run of custom skinning knives made by Larry Page of Aiken, SC, and scaled with it. You could hit the end of a block with a hammer and it would ring, almost like iron. Densest wood I've ever had any dealings with.

I have some short starters for m/l rifles that are turned out of persimmon..............another very dense wood.

SRH

I seem to remember persimmon is also know as white ebony and is related to that tree family. Am I correct or dreaming?

Never heard that Sam. Only thing interesting I know about it is that persimmon was used to make the drivers heads on golf clubs.

SRH

I did a little reading, Sam, and it is indeed known as white ebony. It is Diospyrus Virginiana, which is the same genus as black ebony. However, white ebony from Southeast Asia and Laos is Diospyrus Embryopteris.

There are around 400 species of Diospyrus, but only one in the United States.......... that being Persimmon.

Thanks............you can teach an old dog new tricks.

SRH

I can recall an article in one of the national gun magazines from maybe the early eighties? A collector had a neat as a pin glass room of identical bolt actions, I think 30-06 Howas, in identical patterned sporter stocks. Each one was in a different wood species, I want to say over a hundred different, but it's hazy at this point. Eccentric but interesting, it just came to mind with the topic.

Stan,
I cut some Black Locust when I was building my house , and had it sawed up into 1 by and 2 bys. It rings like metal also. I wouldn't want to let an action into it.
Mike

Before I got out of the cow business I had a lot of fence to maintain, and I bought split black locust fence posts out of N. Georgia by the hundreds at a time. You'd better put them up and drive the staples into them before they dried completely, or you would have to carry the staples in a bucket of oil, and drive them in oily. That, or you wouldn't get them in the post. Hard stuff, but I don't believe it was in the ballpark with that osage orange.

To get back on topic, I don't consider any of the three..........persimmon, osage orange or black locust, gunstock material.

SRH

Several years ago I had to cut down a bunch of Hawthorns to clear a path for a surveyors transit sight line. That was by far the hardest wood I ever cut, even when green. A very large one would only have a trunk 8 or 10 inches in diameter, but it would take more time to cut through than an oak tree twice the diameter. I actually got a few sparks off the saw chain as if I was hitting nails or other embedded metal. The sharp 6d nail sized Hawthorn needles that went into my hands and right through my boot soles added to the fun. I burned the wood not knowing that it makes great tool handles because of its' close grain and hardness.

While the Hawthorne wood is hardly suitable for gun stocks, I did buy one I Grade Syracuse Lefever that was stocked in what appears to be white oak. Whoever did the work did a very nice job, and all of the inletting and details of the exterior including the checkering and the flutes at the nose of the comb were a duplicate of an original factory walnut stock. It is stained a walnut color, but it is clearly oak. I wish I knew the story behind that stock.

Although classified as a softwood, I've always wondered how Pacific yew would work as a gunstock. I cut a chuck from a rather large tree years ago and it was very hard. At the time I was thinking I'd make some pistol grips out of it but never got around to it. I know it does make up into a nice bow.

Boyers love Pacific Yew. I saw lots of it in slash piles from clear cuts in Oregon in the 1970s and 80s, whole trees. Madrone as well.
I still have some Madrone longrifle blanks I had cut back in the 80s. Sorta like fruit wood. Short grained, pink colored and very plain. I made a few longrifle stocks from it and stained them dark.

I stocked a .22 Marlin for a friend as a full length Mannlicher stock out of Holly. The Holly had a lot of golden color flakes when the light hit it but from the side it was very white in color. He liked the black and white contrast. That was a very accurate .22 Squirrel killing machine.

I made a stock out of teak for a duck hunter. Very dense wood, oily wood with stringy areas and not fun at all to work with. Dulled tools quickly due to silica in the wood, could cut only in very thin shaving and tools had to be razor sharp to cut it. But the finish surface was almost burnished. Regular polyurethane would not set up at all for a finish. I had to use a two-part polyurethane, the type for marine use, but it lasted for years with no problems. Also water based stains and glues are useless because the woods natural oiliness repels them. Lacquer works well as a finish if you wipe the surface down to remove the surface oils. Since this was going to used in salt marsh I went with the marine poly finish.

As a particle joke I made a 1100 stock for a friend who owned a wood salt treating company, out of some of his salt treated pine. Don't know if it was the short needle or long needle pine variety as they use both. His salt treated wood was for ground contact and could be used in bulk-heading around water. Very dense stuff and a lot of salt chemicals in it. It was a decent cutting wood but nasty stuff to work with. Cover for eyes, skin and breathing had to be worn when working with it. The dust had some nasty chemicals in it. He used it for many years until his death. Never knew where it went after that. The soft green color and the pine grain made it look laminated. A very hard, dense heavy stock when done. Great for those heavy duck loads. Wondered ab out the metal on the 1100 but never pulled it off to check. I did seal all surfaces so it might not been that much of a problem.

Made stocks out of Cocobolo and Zebra Wood. Cocobolo was very dense and heavy, with dust which can be toxic to many. Skin and eye protection was a requirement. The Zebra Wood was very light and easy to work with but had small voids which had to be filled. These were like small empty gum pockets in the wood. The Cocobolo could take extremely fine checkering but you could not go much finer than 16-18 LPI on the Zebra Wood I had.

Also have used Red and White Oak, Hickory, Black Cherry, Screw Bean Mesquite which was a nightmare to use, Butternut, Spruce for pattern stocks and my worst mistake Sweet Gum.

In the wood blank stack I have Madrone burl, Red Elm, Walnuts of most varieties, Maples, both the softer West Coast Maple in burl, curly, fiddle back, shell, crotch and spalted and Northern hard Maple in fiddle and birds eye, Cherry, Sycamore, a True Mahogany, Bocote burl and quarter sawed, Zebra wood both quarter sawed and slab sawed, Plum which I do not think will work well, Apple and Red Wood burl which I am sure will need to be stabilized with some type of acrylic resins under pressure to make it strong and dense enough to use. There might be others I have forgot or just think are worth trying anyways.

KY Jon,
We grew up thinking Sweet Gum is worthless, but when Norboard opened an "OSB" plant in the county, they paid as much for it as pine. It has some pretty color, but you can hardly plane it flat, it seems to twist while still in the planer.
Mike

Hyedua (pronounced shed-ua , I believe) was used by Theoben for their air rifle stocks. It's a beautifully coloured wood . I spoke to the guy who made their stocks as I wanted one making for another gun but they'd stopped using it, he said the dust was extremely irritating and was a carcinogen.
It would probably be ok for a one off made by hand though.

I probably couldn't make a stock with modeling clay, but I have made a few knife handles out of sassafras, and always wondered how it would be, as a gun stock. I really love the way it changes colors as the light hits it from different angles.
J.R.

That's interesting, J.R. Sassafras seems to be fairly hard wood once completely dry. I don't recall having ever seen one around here large enough for a gunstock blank, except for one. It was the world's record sassafras, and lived in a small town near me in the Methodist churchyard. It was cut down years ago due to internal rot.

I've got a sassafras pole that my Grandaddy had for weighing cotton that was hand picked and dumped on big burlap sheets, and tied up at the end of the day. There was a balance beam scale that was tied to the sassafras pole with plowline, and was hooked under the knots in the top of the sheet. Then, two men would lift the sheet of cotton and hold it steady, off the ground, while Grandaddy slid the "pea" along the beam until it balanced. That pole is slick as glass from the thousands of handlings, and hard as a nail.

SRH

Any pics of these gun stocks with unique woods?

KY Jon's mentioning madrone reminded me that I used madone once or twice years ago as material for stock patterns. It carves and rasps very well, but doesn't have much to offer in the way of beauty.

https://www.airgunnation.com/topic/theoben-slr-98-carbine-love-the-hyedua-stock/

Back in the 1960s, a friend who was a very good woodworker used Lacewood for a stock. I think it was called Australian Lacewood. It was light in color and not dense, but made a light weight stock. As I recall, it was harder to fill and finish than most woods.

While I can, and do, appreciate the workmanship that goes into stocking a gun with an unusual wood, I am too "conservative" to really like any of it. It almost always comes out looking gaudy, or overstated. As much as I like beautiful curly maple, I don't like to see it on anything other than muzzleloaders of the appropriate type. When I see a gun, of any kind, stocked with a wood that wasn't used on them originally, I have to make myself try to like it...............and I usually fail. Maybe if shotgun makers had originally stocked their guns in dogwood, or heart pine, I would see things differently.

JMO, not worth much..............SRH