doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Reshaping stock

I picked up a nice 16 gauge german gun that I need to reshape the stock to fit me. I will be doing the work myself. In order to fit me, I need to take the comb and heal down a little which should not be a problem. I am also considering removing the cheek pad which concerns me. ( I think cheek pads are butt ugly:) I am not sure what the best method of removing this is. Rasping file? Belt sander?

I addition, I need to lengthen the stock about 3/4" so I am planning on removing the butt plate and installing a period appropriate (1925) butt pad. The stock butt and the butt plate are curved and I do not want to cut it flat. Are there butt pads that will reshape to conform to the stock butt. I would like the pad to be black and somewhat soft unlike the red Silvers pads which to me are like concrete.

You said you would be installing a period correct pad...I'm not sure a soft black pad was available in 1925. There are soft red, orange, brown and black pads available that would be appropriate....NECG offers some nice pads that when fitted up right look good and age/vintage appropriate. You can get some pad base plates to bend without cracking them (usually by warming them up and slowly bending), it depends how much curve you are dealing with though.
A rasp would be a good place to start when it comes to removing the cheek piece.

look on places like gunbroker at guns that have been altered by previous owners for more ideas.....no rush on looking as the pages are always full of them as it is hard to sell at any price....

BTW..can I ask??...are you a TRAP shooter????....the ones I have know have never owned a gun that didn't need to be altered........

You can grind any pad to match the curve of the buttstock but if unskilled you may need several pads to get the hang of it through trial and error.

It took me two attempts at grinding to match the curve of my 24 gauge's butt.

When looking at adding a pad you need to consider how it will effect the handling in terms of balance. A pachmayr or silvers pad are both very heavy and will add weight to the end of your gun and can easily make it butt heavy. You may have to hollow out the butt some.

Another course of action I have pursued is to use Italian made Cervellati microcell pads which are roughly 1/3 the weight of the same thickness rubber pad. They come in both black (available in the USA from Hastings) and brown (though for the brown you need to find someone in Europe who will ship it to you)

Another challenge with the Cervellati pads is they require a finer grit sanding belt than the normal rubber pads which led me to do it myself as the local guy in Kansas City was not interested in William Tell Hunting Club, Moosehead Lake, Maine taking the job.

A block plane, or spoke shave can also be useful for cheek piece removal. Since you will have to refinish the stock anyway mounting the pad and grinding it while fixed to the stock. That will maintain the curve of the butt.

I'm not sure he's talking about grinding the pad itself to have a "curve". What I got out of it was he didn't want to cut the stock flat to mount the pad. In that case, the baseplate of the pad would have to be bent to match the curvature of the uncut stock. When the baseplate has to be manipulated to match an exiting curve, you're limited in what baseplates or pads can be bent like that. In fact...it's somewhat normal to break 1 or two before finding one that bends the way you want it.

rather than butchering the original stock, why not send the gun off to a stocker, who can fit wood blanks to the receiver and forend iron, so you can then shape them to your needs...

ed
Probably because that would be way to expensive, & he feels like he can do a good job himself .
Go for it Tom, just take your time & be carefull of digging in and taking a too deep slab off that cheek piece.
Could you make a mock up of the curve you need for the pad, & then
heat (boil) n bend the pad a little & repeat until you get it right?
I'd shoot the gun with the cheeck piece on just to see if it needed to be taken off...I've never had a cheek piece gun,so have no idea how they feel
good luck...keep us posted mate
cheers
franc

Do be aware that the top of the comb area on stocks with a cheek peice can be very narrow which might not be comfortable to shoot after the cheek peice is removed. Pick out a stock you like and make a card board profile cutout to go over it and then try it over this gun. If you see daylight under it with the cheek peice still on it, after altering it to go over the cheekpeice then you might have a problem. You might be ok if you need to lower the comb height. Measure twice then cut once.

Lefusil - That's correct. I want to get the base of the pad to fit the concave shape of the stock. I would like to find a butt pad that is somewhat flexible with or without heat. Once I get the pad shape like the stock I will grind down the pad. I have successfully done this a number of times and recently did my first leather covered pad on a low end Boswell. I have the jig for this.

Gunut - I used to shoot trap but now spend my time on clays and 5-stand. I learned the hard way that modern stocks do not fit me. I had terrible cheek slap to the point it would bruise, swell and sometimes bleed. Not fun. I'm tall and slender and found guns with a lot of drop at comb and heal really helped. That's why I always loved shooting my fathers Sterlingworth and that's how I got back into shooting older SxS guns with more drop.

Ed - this is a hobby for me and I do not butcher stocks. Why pay a gunsmith when you enjoy doing it and are fairly good at doing it. I'm not a professional but they look pretty good and I learn more every time I do one. Those things I don't feel comfortable doing like checkering and barrel work I send out, although my rust blueing is pretty good.