doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Shrinking wood?

A friend has three vintage sxs's in his safe of which he thinks the wood to either side of the trigger guard at the rear of the receiver might have shrunk some and would like to know why. The metal is now proud of the wood in the area. Said he has several cans of silica gel drier sitting on the floor of the safe and puts them in the oven to bring them back to a pink color whenever they appear to look bluish. Would this shrinking condition be reversible? Thanks in advance. G.

On vintage guns I think wood shrinkage has allot to do with the quality of the wood used when the gun was built....I have several 100 year old plus W&C Scotts that saw lots of use and have very little if any wood shrinkage then I've saw other guns with lots of shrinkage. Scott was known for having lots of cured stock blanks on hand.

I've heard some sellers mention glass bedding but I don't think wood shrinkage is reversible.

I think it's from sitting inside the safe where it's dry. Wood will continue to dry out in a dry and warm atmosphere. Take it out and let it set in the house somewhere, or preferably out shooting and it should come back up.

Guns:
Wood shrinks due to a loss of moisture content. This can occur from age, the atmosphere or both. Replace some moisture and the wood may well swell back up to its previous level. But some won't. And it is fairly unpredictable. "Quality" in wood is a variable term. Good stock wood is dried to a specific moisture content, but once the stock is made, it can swell or shrink depending on where the gun "lives." In Arizona, it will be one size. In Oregon, another.

I'd suggest your friend not be so manic about moisture in the safe. Just dry enough to prevent moisture condensation is dry enough.

Best, Kensal

I take medicine for that.

This is my first post here but I may be able to provide some info in wood shrinkage. I also play stringed musical instruments (36 string chorded zither) and I can say for a fact that wood shrinks in dry atmosphere. What we musicians do is put a Humistat in the case of our fine instruments when humidity is low. If I don't do this my instrument goes extremely flat because of shrinkage. All a Humistat is, is a water tube that meters out moisture and gives the wood a drink. Am I going to put a humistat in my gun case? No! and I'm not taking the stocks off of my fine Remingtons for separate storage. What I'm saying is that we gun owners have a problem with storing our shotguns. We have two different materials steel and wood. One likes moisture the other doesn't. What I do is compromise. I store my fine shotguns in the open air and make sure they get a good wipe down with fine oil every so often. I also make sure that I don't let finger prints remain on the steel because of the acids in our skin oil.

I had a Manton percussion double some time ago that must�ve been stored in a very hot dry attic for most of it�s retirement, I could see the shrinkage in the wood from across the room. I purchased it, took it home gave the wood an acetone bath and a Tru-Oil refinish and some of the shrinkage did go away, but not all. I only freshened it up and didn�t try to really �restore� it. As it was, I used it for preserve p-burd hunting and at SXS events. It was a 9/10 gauge that had been honed out to an 8.5/9 gauge.
Steve

So what is the ideal humidity for a gun safe? With a 24" Golden Rod mine is currently at 45%. I don't want the wood to shrink but I certainly don't want rust. What's the compromise?

I live in GA, leave my safe door open a lot of the time, and have never had a gun rust in the safe. I think rusting guns are overstated and Golden Rods way over valued.

Heat drives moisture out of wood. The moisture content inside a house is pretty low to begin with, but heat is the enemy. If a golden rod is warm, it can cause a problem, IMO. Not with your steel, but with your wood. Especially in a closed area, like a safe.

Back when I was working with wood that required a low MC, I spoke with the head of the UGA school that deals with such. He said the MC of wood (maple blocks for test purposes) treated (with poly) and untreated all came to the same level of MC after a year in an unheated but dry environment. Moisture molecules are so small they will penetrate any finish. This level was the ambient MC of the air, which inside a structure is much lower than the outside.

Any time you have dew on your lawn, the MC has reached 100%. But you don't get dew inside a shed. Lower MC.

Wood also changes dimension differently in different directions--measured across the grain it may shrink differently than the length of the grain. The fact that one gun shrank significantly and the other didn't maight also indicate something about the grain flow of the wood there. I recently worked on a factory beretta stock that had grain flow in the wrist at almost 90 degrees to the length of the gun! (it had 3 steel pins through the wrist from the factory) It was a refinish because water just from hunting in wet weather had gotten in and ruined the thin finish and warped the head of the stock--I'm quite certain the stock would not have moved nearly as much had the grain flow been better.