doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Restocking Slab/Rift or Quartersawn?

Curious of the respective thoughts on what type sawing yields the best strength/beauty etc. I have had a few guns stocked over the years and have always avoided anything but Quartersawn, but it seems if one wants to see more smoke/marble cake in the mineral streaking then Slab shows a lot more. I've always been more concerned about layout/strength in the wrist area and felt quartersawn provided more strength in that area.

Lastly, back in the glory days of double making it seems like no guns were stocked with slab sawn wood, am I correct or off base on thinking that?

Tom,

Here's a good read on marbling and streaking in quarter-sawn and flat-cut saw English blanks. Some pretty good info here.

http://www.oldtreegunblanks.com/sawcuts.html

SRH

It doesn't matter how the wood is cut. With either quarter or slab sawn, you have to visual inspect the area that will run through the wrist of the stock. You need nice long straight grain through that area, with a minimum of run out. Whether it is slab or quarter sawn only means what direction that potential run out could be, i.e. either top to bottom, or side to side.

I have seen MANY blanks regardless of cut, that will not meet that requirement. Each blank needs to be evaluated on a piece by piece basis.

Respectfully, I could not disagree with this more. It matters a great deal how the wood is cut, and it has been known for centuries that quarter sawn is, by nature, the most stable cut. There is no finish employed in typical gunstock use that can completely stop moisture migration, which is a leading cause of wood "movement." Wood absorbs and loses moisture depending on its environment, and wood moves the most in line with the growth rings. Quarter sawn puts the growth rings (ideally) 90 degrees or perpendicular to the face of the blank (60 to 90 degrees is generally classified quarter, 60 to 30 rift, 30 to 0 or parallel slab or flat sawn), and minimizes inevitable wood movement. It is also my direct experience of almost 50 years of woodworking the not only is quarter sawn preferred in most any application for strength, because movement is minimized it holds a finish better.

Run out in the wrist is of course to be avoided, and as that is generally the area of the stock with the least mass, extra attention should be paid to flow and figure in that area. But to say it does not matter how the blank is cut is simply a bridge too far for me.

Mike

Don't forget symmetry.
I don't care for one sided blanks.

Amen to that.
JR

From Fender guitars website, but a good explanation, nonetheless:
http://www2.fender.com/experience/tech-talk/quartersawn-necks/
JR

The most predictable blanks are perfectly quarter sawn. Slab or rift can be nice but I least worry about direction of grain flow in the wrist and side to side run out. You even get a few blanks which start out as one thing on one end and end up another by the end of the blank. You see a lot of quarter to rift blanks but you have to watch where the grain changes direction. Also rift to slab blanks as well. It is for that reason I won't by any blanks unless I can get clear pictures of all six sides of the blank.

Some one sided blanks will improve when shaped. Some even become no sided as all the surface figure is lost when cut. Even looking at the butt end can only give you a hint but no absolute guarantee of what you will get. And if the seller claims kiln dried wood I just walk away. Kiln dried wood tends to be very prone to chipping and may have extreme areas or stress in them due to such rapid drying. Bad enough with some sellers claiming air dried wood which you find out later is only half dried. Better to buy the wood and let it dry several years more before you use it. Unless you live in extreme climate areas I don't think you can damage wood by letting it dry longer. It's for that reason many of us have many more blanks than we will ever use, just drying in our wood racks. I had 300 blanks at one time but have culled them down to a tidy 40-50 blanks. If lucky I'll get to use a quarter of them.

That is an interesting read Stan. It's not so much about the blanks, but market for them. I'd agree with CZ about one sided blanks, it's not so satisfying to go there if a person doesn't want to with their eyes wide open.

The original question was specifically about wood strength through the wrist. You bring up many good facts about wood, but again, the only thing that matters on that specific point is grain run out in the wrist, regardless of how the blank is cut. A quartersawn blank with extreme run out in the wrist is simply not going to be as strong as a straight grained, slabsawn piece.

I was simply pointing out that the OP should not get hung up on quartersawn vs. slabsawn as the sole reason for picking a specific blank. I have seen piles of quartersawn blanks that would make terrible gunstocks. Obviously, one would pick a quartersawn blank if given the opportunity, but each one must still be evaluated on a piece by piece basis.

I got the impression from the link, that all that matters is if you see swirls on the end grain.

I think the fact that the log renders 25% more blanks when cut as suggested, plays a role in the Sawyer's decisions.

I also think that relatively few stocks break from recoil. Most fancy grade blanks are for club guns whose only risk is getting shut in a car door, or knocked out of the rack.

Thanks for the comments. Most stocks I've seen broken over the years are from falls. I've never seen one broken from recoil, but I have heard some of the Parker Repro's with english style stocks did break during firing because of poor layout in the wrist.

I believe that most of those Parker Repro blanks were provided by Calico Hardwoods in Ca, but I could be mistaken. FWIW, I've only ever used Quartersawn wood. I also long ago bought a very fancy piece of Circassian and watched Dan Rossiter cut it into a small pile of foreends because the layout was awful. I learned a lot that day, because it cost me some money out of my pocket.

Here is one of the best explanations of how wood is sawn.
http://www.hardwooddistributors.org/blog...in-sawn-lumber/
Flat sawn wood sawn over 150 years ago might have been good for stocks because of the how tight the grain was, but not now.
Also back then the wood was air dried and some was left for 25 years before it was used, reasoning was it was subject to hot, cold, wet, dry after all these years and became stable. Now a days they throw it in a kiln for a few days and call it quits, they can't afford to have sitting around.
As you will read, rift sawn is some of the best cuttings but also the most waste.
The best figure is usually from the root or on a large tree, where branches are.

Most people only have a handful of stocks made during a shooting lifetime. So, we get to choose whatever "cut" we want, and how it's dried.

Over on Woodnet, there's a guy whose family has been providing all the Euro gun companies stock wood since before the Big War.

They kiln dry their blanks by the ten's of thousands. Shipping container's full, dried en mass. Of course they are feeding factories, and endless duplicators, so a % scrap is to be expected.

He pretty much disagree's with everything people ever say on these sites. I figure somewhere's in the middle is where I will be satisfied. I doubt that if I let a blank lay in my barn for another 50 years, that it would one day decide not to move when the draw knife comes out. But not the day before.

Myself, I don't see how a 200 year old tree is all that different than a 150 year old tree. A tree is the product of it's growth environment. Heartwood is dead, and has been for a long time. When a blank is cut, only so much stress relief can occur. The pretty little swirlies are all tied up in knots decades before I ever see them, and I doubt they plan on changing their relationships when I cut through them.

Regrettably, there is no definitive way to prove a negative. Maybe a book matched set would be like twins during an experiment.

Apparently CZ, you have never cut a walnut tree to produce blanks. The English Walnut tree that I had cut up about 15 months ago is air drying nicely. But despite my care in handling the wet slabs, I expect to have some checks and stress cracks as they slowly season. They have had the ends heavily coated with a few coats of polyurethane and are stacked and stickered out of the weather. But one slab already has a nice crack running along those pretty swirlies that I had hoped would grace a buttstock. This is not a huge unexpected tragedy. This is the nature of figured walnut. I can only hope that I don't lose more. I had the same experiences with a truckload of black walnut slabs I purchased some years ago. But the price was so nice that the inevitable losses due to checks and cracks were quite acceptable. As to your statement about kiln drying... if kiln drying was just as good as air drying, everyone would do it. But of course, even kiln drying can be rushed too much with bad consequences.

Keith, I log all my properties. I sell the hardwood.

I just find it interesting that a major producer of stock material says kiln drying (as whatever their process entails) provides so many blanks to all the major manufacturers. They get satisfactory results on a large scale.

Yet here, it's Satan's handwork.

You wight try a wax product and heavier ricking for your next attempt at air drying fresh cuts.

OK, so you haven't cut any walnut to pruduce gunstock blanks. I can't claim to be an expert either. I had to hire a guy with a portable band sawmill who would cut my English Walnut as I requested. This batch should be ready to start turning out gunstocks by the time I retire. It was properly handled, stacked, and stickered. I discovered that one large slab had a long crack running along the "swirlies" as you call them when I checked them late this summer. This large slab had been near the bottom of the pile with 4 or 5 other slabs on top of it. My brother-in-law and I strained mightily when we unloaded them from my truck and stacked them in the shed. The amount of weight on top was more than sufficient. I was surprised, as always, how much weight the green wood lost in only one year. I was not surprised that I lost much of a piece that I hoped might yield one or two full length rifle stocks. I should still get at least one two piece stock ad a number of forend blanks out of it if it doesn't get much worse.

I know that kiln drying is not a Satanic practice. Millions of perfectly serviceable factory firearms prove otherwise. But there is also a large body of evidence provided by the very best gunstockers and fine furniture makers to prove that properly air dried and well seasoned wood is better than kiln drying. But cracks and checks can and do open up even in what should be old stabilized air dried wood. After all, it's wood, and not all of it is perfect or suitable for gunstocks.

For years I cut crotch wood to get the best figure in the butt stock. After reducing the crotch to 2.5 inch slabs I then layout the wood for great grain in the wrist and a good butt. This can yield some mariginal blanks. I held one very fancy piece for 43 years because it would only make a straight stock ( not enough wood for a pistol grip) This year I had a single barrel LCS trap gun come to me with a straight stock. The original stock had been trap shootered,aka butchered! It now wears that43 year old blank and looks great!

Bill

Bill, you are the epitome of patience.

Mike

Only a thought from a hobbyist point of view. Even though it seemed like a large slab, I'd consider leaving it quite a bit bigger when rough cut. If a big check starts, you can cross cut it off, but there's a good chance that it continues into the 'good' looking area. With oversized boards, I've had good luck just carefully splitting a board all the way through with a wedge. It may hang up on grain 'swirlies', and it can be finished with a best guess saw cut.

It'll generally follow the grain, you can rough clean it up on the band saw, then back on the drying stack. Early on, the wood does not need to look like a nicely milled up board or commercially prepped stock blank. I think CZ has a thought about sealing the end grain with things that may breathe a little less. I've had a chance to dry a fair bit of hardwood that's considered to be on the pricey side of things, and I've come to the conclusion quite a while ago to break it down purely for what I hope is quality and not worry about maximizing quantity. Best of luck with your stash, I'm sure you'll reveal some real gems when the time comes. Again, only thoughts of one way to look at it.

I have often thought that having your own tree cut, drying it, then working through it all to get the best of the best, is much like taking your own steer to the abbatoir to have butchered for the family's beef. I've done it several times in my life, and came to the conclusion that I'd much rather pick out what I want at the butcher shop than go through the hassle and risk of having a freezer full of tough steaks. It happens. That said, I admire anyone who goes to the effort to research the proper way to do it, and pulls it off. I have 6 or 7 curly maple longrifle blanks bolted together in my shop that have been air drying for at least 45 years. They were cut locally and given to me by a dear departed friend. I'll probably never use them.

SRH

You are right Stan, for most people, the juice isn't worth the squeeze.

But, if you get a book matched pair of AAA or above, well, digging out a stump and powerwashing it is suddenly viable.

It's like opening a very heavy and dirty box of chocolates.

Everybody thinks they are going to get rich off the Walnut tree littering Grandma's front yard. That's not been my experience, though there is better money in a Walnut log than a Hard Maple log. I know some farmers that were told as kids to plant them for their retirement.

Who know's, maybe your Grandkid's can plant a couple runs and in 80 years get something for them.

Furniture and trim grade walnut (even black walnut!) has become a lot more expensive in the past 18 months. I think that the 90% of the walnut tree that will not make good stock blanks can still be worth cutting and drying.

20 years ago we planted 4500 black walnuts in the river bottoms as part of a riparian corridor program. I figure in about 80 more years someone is going to have a major harvest.

DDA

It�s pretty easy to pick up the tele and call Cecil Fredi if you want a very nice blank at a reasonable price, air dried in the Las Vegas desert. Having said that, I can certainly see some satisfaction from a blank derived from a tree from your own property. I had several white oak trees that had been hit by lightning sawed into lumber about 15 or so years ago which I stacked in a barn, and slatted to air dry. My neighbor is a wood worker and he recently made shutters for my house out of that oak. You would not believe how much lumber he went through to make 12 shutters. Much of that wood developed cracks over time. I�m wondering if being struck by lightning had something to do with lots of the cracks? Anyway, the shutters are fabulous, and I�m guessing they will last much longer than the poplar shutters they replaced.....and I think it�s kind of neat they came from trees off my farm.

When the young country doctor that built my house married, in 1874, he built this house. First year taxes were paid was 1875. They evidently planted the yard full of red oaks that year, because in 1998 the last one died, from drought. All the others had been pithy or rotten in the heart, but that last one wasn't. I had it cut down, learned it was solid to the first year growth ring, counted the rings, which placed it being planted at about the time the house was built, and decided to preserve as much of it as I could in furniture. I took a 16+ ft. log to a friend with a WoodMizer sawmill and he sawed 840 bd./ft. of boards out of it, and kiln dried them for me on site. Many of the boards checked, as buzz described, and there was much waste, but I had the best of them built into a 4' X 12' dining room table and sideboard buffet. My family, and friends, gather 'round it several times a year to feast and fellowship.

It really is special to have furniture that was built from a tree that was planted by the man that had the house built, Dr. W. J. Herrington. RIP

SRH

Stan,
That's a great story, and what a priceless treasure to have as a centerpiece of your home. Special furniture such as that is enduring.
Karl

When I clear cut a detached 17 acre tract of pines I have in middle GA last summer, I found an old house I'd forgotten about. Before I re-plant I plan to salvage the floor joists to use for a dinner table like Stan described. It won't be red oak, but hundred year+ old heart pine might be nice...Geo

Geo, southern yellow pine would be a great table. They are most likely a full 2" x 10" and just a light skim cut with a thickness planer, ripped and jointed you will have a table for a few generations.
I can already see a nice trestle table.

Geo, many years ago I had an old house that had been sitting empty for at least fifty years. Floor boards were in poor shape but the joist and main beams were fine. We pulled out 20 plus 4x8 x 16-24' old growth red oak joist and beams. The growth rings were so close that you could not count them with the naked eye. Everything had been notched and pegged to join them. A few cut nails came out with the floor boards. It was such nice clean, clear lumber. Everything was quarter sawed. No knots in them anywhere. I suspect it had been timbered and sawn into lumber on the same farm the house was on. I later learned that house had been moved twice on that farm from the riverbank to a hill and later toward the new road. After all that it was just as solid as the day it was built. Built well with top materials.

When my dad was a young boy (born 1910) he lived in a house with a Puncheon floor. How many here even know what that is?? When I was in my teens he carried me to where it was still standing, but we weren't able to go inside, only saw it from the outside. Some years back my wife & I drove by the place again but the house was then gone. While living there my Grandmother threw some dishwater outside & threw off her wedding band. The entire family searched for it diligently but were unable to find it. A short while later they moved to the Metropolis of "Bell Buckle" TN. Some 20 years after the loss a gentleman knocked on the door of their home in Bell Buckle. He had the ring in his hand. His family had moved in to the house & had been planting some flowers & unearthed it. Her initials "ELF" were engraved inside. He had tracked her down by these & returned it. So far as I know she wore it from then until the day of her death, many years later.
My Grandmother's maiden name was Kelly & she married a Fulks. When she married her initials thus changed from "ELK" to ELF".

Puncheon floor was a lot of work back when time was most of what they had. To take a hand or foot adze to level planks left a floor which was slightly like a washboard. As a kid I bet it was not fun crawling around either. No wonder those men were tough as nails when you grew up in a rough house it made you tougher. On the farm I grew up on we had several floors like that in small cabins which we were told had housed tenant farmer and before that most likely a small slave family.

The floor joists under me, as I type this on an Apple computer, in a room illuminated by LED lighting, are mortised and tenoned, and held with wooden pegs about 1 1/2" diameter. They are all heart cut yellow pine. Termites have tried to bore into them at times, but they get about 1/4" deep and give up. Fat lightered pine doesn't give in to termites.

I replaced all the windows years ago with double paned insulated ones. The originals had those wavy glass panes that look like they got too hot and "ran". Even though I liked the looks of the old ones, I'll admit the new ones are a lot better! Oh, the compromises we make for the comfort of our wives! I can well remember that, before they were replaced, on a cold and windy night a NW wind would make the curtains on those windows wave about inside the house like a tortured wraith. "Drafty" is entirely too mild a term for it.

SRH

Heart pine is nearly bullet proof. Very hard, better than cyprus for rot resistance, I made gun rests from it 28 years ago, they sit in the sun and rain and are still in great shape. The only problem I have is that it splits very easy.

bill

It does split easily, bill. But if you ever need to nail a lot of it use "square" "cut" nails. They punch a rectangular hole as they're driven through the board instead of acting like a wedge as a conventional nail does. In my dining room the flooring, the walls up to the chair rail, the chair rail itself and the 7- piece crown molding were all nailed with cut nails. Very few splits, and those boards were 70-80 yr. old re-planed lumber salvaged from tenant houses on this place. Fat as a pig.

SRH

Stan I know exactly what you mean about the old windows. The only one I replaced in my Granfathers house had the wavy glass. My wife had a fit cause she liked it but we had no choice because time had taken its toll.

My only regret is that I didn't replace the rest of them because of the wind and curtian situation you describe.

It's not related, but the comments remind me of getting into the walls of a couple of plain houses for small projects. They were framed in old growth Redwood, and quite a ways away from where they were logged. It's probably like good SYP, they don't make 'em like they used to. Geeze Stan, seven piece crown molding and cut nails, that was not easy.

The carpenter showed out on that, craigd. I'll try to get a pic of it tomorrow. I love it. It has what he called "dental work". He was just a country carpenter, but he had vision.

Old SYP lumber is highly sought after, even now. Some of the real old country churches have pews made of very wide SYP boards. Those old church pews are very valuable, but alas, there are almost none left.

One interesting fact is that the masts on many of the old sailing ships were made of SYP. Whole trees were turned into huge, tall main masts.

https://books.google.com/books?id=oOwOAA...sts&f=false

SRH

Only a guess, but you may be thinking 'dentil', the repeating block strip that might be worked into the crown molding somewhere. In a completely silly side story, a while back I made a short span of decorative natural finish wood fencing. Nothing store bought, the whole thing was milled up from rough stock with some dentil molding that I made up. A couple of years later, on a whim, my wife had it painted. I could've slapped that thing together for a fraction of the time and money if I only knew.

Anyway, if it's the dentil molding that I'm thinking about, there's a bunch of marginally supported end grain. You started with some good stock, seeing how you folks were commenting about splitting, for your finish carpenter to tackle the project. The fellow might have had some vision, but he sounds like a good ole boy that took pride in himself and his work. Sure, I'd like to see how it turned out if a picture works out. Take care.

I have several small areas old growth SYP trees on my land. Two trees were prime candidates to be the mast for the Pride of Baltimore II. A topsail schooner built in the 1980's to replace the first ship which sank in 1986. The criteria for the mast was clear of limbs for the first 60' and needed to square about 24-32 inches at that point. Big tree. It was a long time ago and my best trees were marginal they said. I think the fact I was not going to give them to them and cutting them would best be done with a helicopter for removal had a lot to do with their being passed over. You can not cut a few trees, in the middle of the woods and drag them out when they are the biggest part of 100 plus feet. Same woods produced pilings for the 1939 Worlds Fair. Those were cut 60-75' long and trucked up at night time by my grandfather. I guess those were the little bothers of these bigger, older monsters.

Funny how attached I have become to those old trees. From a money standpoint cutting them would be easy but there are so few of them left anymore. Even the bark looks different. Big blocks like your hand, worn smooth with time, almost like the tree is shingled in bark. I just let them keep growing and will try to manage the trees around them to protect them. But I know all trees die in the end. These I can enjoy and let live for now but I worry about lightening, hurricanes and the damn borer getting into them.

Yes, Craig, it is dentil. I purposely misspelled it, and put it in quotation marks, because that was the way the old carpenter understood the word. It reminded him of teeth, so "dental".

I'll try to get those pics this morning.

SRH

As for gunstocks; I use quarter-sawn walnut almost exclusively. I'm finishing up a Krag rifle project and chose a pure slab-sawn stick of English walnut because I thought the vertical grain better for the Krag with wood on the left side of the action.
I do use English walnut exclusively, except for ebony tips. I've written thousands of words on why I prefer quarter-sawn wood for stockmaking.

Have two of your books. Learned a lot from them over the years. They are both pretty beat up, dog eared, written on etc.

"... Learned a lot from them over the years. They are both pretty beat up, dog eared, written on etc"

About the highest complements an author can hear, Thanks!
Steven.

I took a copy of a Montana Birding field guide to a talk by the author several years ago. It had the soft-cover coming off, the pages edges severely worn and curled in the corners. The author Terry McEneaney inscribed it, "See you in the field".
He was delighted!

I think another complement to any author is to read his books or articles again and again. Often your understanding changes over time because your experiences have changed your viewpoint. So things you just skimmed or paid no real attention over time become much more meaningful or better appreciated.

I have some authors whose books and articles have been read once and put up on a be shelf while others have had every book or article read many, many times. Like doing it again will squeeze just one more little tidbit out of it.

I'd just like to say this is an excellent thread, learned a lot about a subject that I'd not realised was so complex and now understand a lot more about stocks and wood quality.
Thanks.

I agree, and it is the reason I have saved all my back issues of SSM. Steven's tech articles are a treasure trove of information that I refuse to throw out. Some of MM's stuff is worth re-reading, too. Some of it.

SRH

I didn't even know what a Pine Siskin was.

Nick, why don't we shoot together in late May?

Pine Siskins come to my feeders in early spring. They much prefer the tiny nyger seed and are quite acrobatic, mainly feeding upside down. I enjoy looking closely to see their yellow wing bars and love how aggressive these tiny beings can be!

I have all the back issues of SSM as I have stories in most of them. I surely enjoy the notion that some think my stuff is worth rereading and that folks revisit with an enhanced perspective. I also read things here that I imagine the poster might have learned from something I learned and passed on via a magazine column.

I'm my biggest fan and still read my articles first, in Sports Afield. I hope this doesn't sound too narcissistic or egotistical? With the good editing I've been fortunate to experience, they always look and read differently in the magazine format, along with photo placement, they appear much better than in manuscript form. Sometimes I'm delighted, sometime not so much~~

Editors have been very good to my writing, a fact that I have always had the upmost appreciation for and have tried to acknowledge.