doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Please post pictures of feather crotch stocks

Here's a nice feathered stock....the orange is what attracted me to this stock.

Fiddleback without feather

OK, here's a question for you wood guys...I have seen a (very) few stocks that had a really cool combination of figure that I like very much. It was a curly figure very much like what you get on the very EDGE of "crotch feather", but it was not what I would call "fiddleback", it was much less even and linear and much more subtle...I imagine it was truly the edge of a very large feather. If one was to go looking for a blank like this, how would you describe this figure to a wood seller so they knew what you were looking for? Anyone have pictures of wood like this?

Feather can be very nice, but I've experienced more significant movement/warpage w/ feather crotch American walnut than any other. The worst was a TC grade 870 trap gun I bought new in the middle '70s and shot a lot. I laid it aside for many years, upright in a gun cabinet, pulled it down in the mid 90s to teach a trap shooting class. It felt funny, I didn't seem to hit with it the way I used to, then I examined it critically. It went from slight cast off, to 5/8" cast on. I sent it to Remington, who partially corrected it (bent it, I assume)...then w/in a year, it warped back. I've had the same experience with some other stocks, but none so dramatically. The only common denominator was exhibition feather figured American walnut.

I've come to prefer fiddleback in American walnut, but am more hard over toward juglans regia these days...

1927 Ithaca 4e SBT
(shoots even better than it looks):

To me that Claro burl with good grain flow in the wrist area. Fellow who stocked my Fox custom has a piece like that. He said the are fun to balance because they are very light in the butt because the burl. He also said, if you can find one like yours (and his) you've got something pretty special in the looks department.

Attached is a Exhibition Claro walnut that I purchased Green from a now deceased wood guy (Don Cantwell) in Chico Ca. I bought it in in 1986 and it aged until 1998 when I used it to restock a Merkel Model 47S while I was stationed in Germany. Unfortunately, per my german stocker, the grain flow wasn't perfect in the wrist area and he therefore made it thicker in the wrist then the 47S stock was. That made the gun just not feel right for a 20 gauge bird gun and I sold it shortly after I returned to the states. It was however an super piece of feather Crotch walnut for sure.