doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Shrinking Buttplates

Why do some hard rubber or gutta percha buttplates seem to shrink over time, and others don't? TT

I have had some stock wood to swell and be proud of the butt plate. Bobby

Much more likely what Bobby said - wood movement, swelling in particular. Or mismatched plates. I can't recall ever working on a plate that I thought had shrunk. Horn maybe, but not gutta percha. Maybe someone else will chime in but I've never seen it.

Dan

The white spacers on same pads did shrink. The wood was fine.

I have one just like the one in the picture. The gun is still NIB, never used. No swelling of the wood, only shrinking in the pad area.

One more reason to hate white spacers! Thanks Don.

Best, Dan

Two Triggers:

Any buttplate that is made of -- or has parts of plastic or horn -- will shrink over time. Esters and moisture escape and the rest shrinks. It's like women -- eventually you have to accept the truth.

Best, Kensal

Kensal: What you say about moisture makes sense, given the organic nature of these materials. What puzzles me is that, rarely, some apparent shrinkage can be substantial, while in other cases there has been none at all, even in apples-to-apples situations. I've owned century-old Winchester rifles whose buttplates still retain a perfect factory fit. Wouldn't shrinkage be common and occur consistently? I'm sure that in some cases the too-small plates we see are simply nonoriginal, but I've also wondered if different third-party suppliers might have led to this inconsistency, or if different storage methods or climates might be at work.

As to women (and most men), in my experience, over time, shrinkage is not the problem. Best to you, TT

Synthetics could vary from batch to batch enough to cause this. However, I have seen many older Spanish SxSs where the buttplate is huge compared to the stock. I guess that there were a lot of shitey installations - perhaps no more profound than that.

Kensal's response would seem to be the most likely.
If you've ever handled raw plastic pellets before they are molded, you'd be struck by the amount of "moisture" that they seem to have.

Whether a polymer (rubber, plactic etc.) shrinks / expands is dependant on the composition of the compound. For example think about tires and the performance characteristics avaiable, these characteristics are all obtained through the the use of various polymers (up to 6 / more in a tire each with a specific "job to do"), carbon black, here again there are many varities based on carbon chain lenght etc., zinc oxide, if white is desired, oils - again many available, UV inhibitors, anti-oxidants and so on. So if a buttplate may shrink, expand, disintegrate, harden, soften, crack etc. is all dependant on the initial composition, it may turn out good or bad over time. Even where the polymer is kept will have an effect, eg. in sunlight will effect its type of aging (see above), usually only time (sometimes years) can tell the outcome. FWIW --- John Can.