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.
