doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com American Shotguns-Stock Bending?

The Jack Rowe videos make it seem relatively simple to do without a jig. Is this unrealistic? I have a cheap Turkish gun that needs a bit more castoff and drop, but I certainly don't want to break it.

What kind of American walnut?

Bending is an art and a science. Each piece of wood is a wonder and a mystery. Bending slower has given me good results. American Walnut is/has been a frustration and a delight. It is not rocket science....but it does take patience and a willingness to be attentive to what you are doing.

The process used by Jack Rowe is and has been very effective. One really needs to practice on gunstocks other than customers guns... FWIW.

Dennis - that is why I sent you the Greener but might try the Huglu myself!

Just my understanding...the wood resins binding the fibers soften with heat, allowing slippage of the bonds when bending. Woods have different fibers and resins and ratios of those components. If the resin isn't heated enough to allow slippage of the bond, the wood springs back. Since the heat is from the outside, inner areas may not be heated enough and they retain their stress. When the stock sets for a while, those stresses may pull the stock toward the original dimension. I've had good luck in longer duration heating when springback was a problem.

Chuck built a very nice bending jig years ago. A search might recover pics of it, along with an excellent tutorial.

SRH

I'd like to see that too. I've bent a stock (Evans), but it has been a while and I could use a refresher. I have a fairly massive jig up in the rafter of the loft somewhere that I need to bring down and clean up.

I'd assume that American Walnut is any species or cultivar of walnut grown in America.

As Miller stated, most Lefevers were stocked in English Walnut, but it is said that some that were assembled by Ithaca after they bought the Lefever name in 1916 were built with stocks made of Black Walnut. I seem to recall than at least some L.C. Smith guns were built with French Walnut blanks. And of course, French Walnut is just English Walnut (Juglans Regia) that was grown in France. Most Fox and Ithaca guns appear to be Black Walnut, but I don't know where those makers sourced their wood.

There are several species of walnut trees grown in America including some hybrids. English Walnut is considered the very best species for gunstocks because of various characteristics including strength, density, ease of machining or carving, and ability to take fine checkering. But those characteristics can also depend upon things like the soil and climate where the tree was grown, how it was cut, dried, seasoned, etc. I have no personal experience with bending walnut stocks, so I couldn't comment on which species is most amenable to taking a bend without either breaking or rebounding.

American Walnut is Juglans Nigra, Eastern Black Walnut.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juglans_nigra

SRH

Juglans Nigra is Eastern Black Walnut. Period. There are several other walnut species native to North America, and some native to South America.