doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Classic & Custom Single Barreled Sporting Rifles @ doublegunshop.com Rehabilitating a 200-year-old Jaeger Rifle

Before I stress the forestock by jointing it for the patch required at the muzzle, I repair the several minor cracks up and down the barrel inletting by coating the barrel with paste wax as a release agent, and cleaning and gluing the several old cracks using marine epoxy with the barrel mounted so I have something substantial to clamp to. The cracks are cleaned with trichloroethylene solvent and a toothbrush, are allowed to dry, followed by an application of walnut-dyed epoxy in two coats. The first coat is applied thin and allowed to soak in for 15 minutes, followed by a second coat thickened with a high-density filler like cabosil. I prefer West System, but others will work as well, including Acraglass. Paste wax works well as a release agent, and is easier to use than the alcohol-based commercial preparations. Wild tales about gluing actions to stocks and having to whittle them off are exactly that, because releasing epoxy-metal bonds is easy. Raising the temperature of the metal to 200 or so degrees using a soldering iron or torch easily releases the bond to metal, and with no ill effects to the epoxy. If this rifle were going into a museum, I�d use period hide glue. But in private hands, I can�t predict its future, and this thin forestock of brittle old walnut needs all the help it can get if this rifle is to be fired again regularly. In addition to high strength and not requiring clamping pressure, epoxy also glues to its old residue similarly to hide glue. So if these repairs ever crack again, they can be reglued without further damage. In turn, never, ever use polyvinyl acetate glues like Titebond on a valuable antique, as they can�t be successfully reglued or even reversed. While the glue is curing, I perform minor tasks like cleaning the old tallow out of the patchbox.



Next I measure and cut the patch for the muzzle (here you can see my previous epoxy repairs in the old cracks). Saving period wood scraps salvaged from previous antique repairs is useful, but the most important factors when making a patch are accuracy in matching the grain and cutting the joint, and the easiest material to acquire for this purpose is a turning square intended for lathe work. A turning square of the same visual grain density provides a long length of two vertical and two flat-grain faces to find a section of grain that best matches your needs, and you can always age and dye the final, sanded surface later to get the color right. As they are relatively inexpensive, you can purchase several from different vendors to have a better selection of natural colors and grains. Here I�ve selected the section of a turning square that best matches the forestock, and have turned it down on the lathe and bored it using a Forstner bit to save time over gluing on a larger hunk of wood and having to whittle off everything that doesn�t look like the forestock. As the gluing surface is small and the old wood relatively fragile, this is the best approach for this rifle.



Here I�ve jointed the broken surface to dead straight and flat using a block plane, and am carefully fitting my vertical-grain patch to align it with the grain of the forestock.



Enough can�t be said about grain alignment in regards to both strength and cosmetics. The stock on this Jaeger was expertly cut from a tree crotch � when the forestock is aligned with the strips of my laminated benchtop, you can see the bend of the buttstock�s grain at the wrist, aligning the grain (and strength) of the wood perfectly to the moment of effort and stress of the stock. This also prevents the cracked toes so commonly seen on full-length rifle stocks. When making a full-length stock from scratch, if you can�t find a blank cut from a proper crotch, you can achieve the same results by rough-shaping the wrist and heat-bending the stock. I have a detailed article on how to do this on Wiktor Kuc�s �WK Fine Tools.com� website. After glueup, the first step in fitting the rough patch is inletting the barrel, which isn�t straightforward with a heavily-swamped barrel. Hence I�m using an alcohol lamp burning mineral spirits to apply soot to the barrel to mark the high spots for paring, a slow but accurate process.



Final shaping is accomplished using coarse and fine rasps and even finer machinist files and scrapers before abrasive paper. At this stage I begin to keep a bowl of mineral spirits with a towel handy. When you want to see how the wood will look under a finish, a simple swipe with the dampened towel reveals surface flaws you won�t otherwise see.



The new horn nose cap is mortised using several layers of masking tape as the saw index to cut the shoulder followed by rasps and scraper to shape the tenon. Before glueup, the horn stock was smoothed using a belt sander, boiled in water until it was heated all the way through, and bent around the mortise to set its shape. Cow horn is layered like your finger nails. While it bends and takes a set easily with heat, it doesn�t cut cleanly with woodworking tools; however it sands to shape very nicely and glues easily. To insure there would be no flaking in use, after bending I allowed it to dry and treated the edges with thin cyanoacrylate glue before assembly. I use epoxy glue to install the nose cap, as the tenon on the end of the forestock is fragile, and already has epoxy repairs. If this nose cap ever requires replacement, it will be a simple matter to carefully grind it off and fashion a new one. I installed the nose cap over-thick with rough-shaped edges, and finished it using a power sander after the glue cured. Last, I raised the grain a couple times on the entire patch assembly using a water-dampened towel during final sanding.



After final sanding, to age the wood before dyeing, I apply bleach to age it. Normally this is done using a slurry of oxalic acid granules dissolved in mineral spirits, but here I�m using plain chlorine bleach, which imparts a slight yellow cast to the wood which matches this French Walnut better. After drying I remove the small amount of raised grain using 400-grit abrasive paper, and begin the process of diluting brown aniline dye with clear alcohol until I achieve the color that best matches the old wood, testing it on matching scraps as I go.



Only after all mechanical repairs are complete do I clean the stock, the idea being to dissolve the top layers of dirty, degraded finish and spread them to the repairs to blend color. Solvents used for cleaning depend on the finish, so you have to test it. Alcohol dissolves shellac, acetone dissolves lacquer and methylene chloride dissolves hard varnishes, the goal being to remove only the degraded layers of finish, and not strip to bare wood, thus removing the fillers and age patina. For stocks still in their original finish without extensive repairs involving new wood, the proprietary restoration product Vulpex Soap Concentrate is often adequate, especially on oil and shellac-based finishes. This stock, however, has extensive repairs and has been recoated during its life. The hard varnish has taken an ugly, yellow cast and the fine, flat-top checkering is full of hardened finish as well caked-in dirt. After scrubbing the inletting thoroughly with trichloroethylene to remove any petroleum oils, I use the proprietary restoration solvent Formby�s Furniture Refinisher and #0000 steel wool and a stiff tooth brush. Forby�s is stronger than basic solvents like acetone, dissolves all finishes except polyurethane and epoxy, and I�m careful not to take off too much, too fast. Only in the checkering to I remove all the old finish.



After neutralizing all the solvents by scrubbing with mineral spirits, I mix oil pigments with drier to match the stock color and feather a tiny bit of pigment atop each of the repair lines to cloud them. Then to set the color I apply a wash coat of Truoil wiping varnish thinned with mineral spirits and a few drops of cobalt or japan drier added. I apply it to all the stock�s inletting, too, as a sealer. The drier aids the new coating amalgamate with the residue of the old coating beneath, and is only necessary for the first coat. Using driers on subsequent coats can make the final finish brittle and prone to chipping and delamination. I prefer Truoil because it�s a natural oil-based finish that builds, rubs out nicely, and is reversible and renewable. It is a soft finish that wears off in use, but in turn, is also easily top coated, and can be rubbed down to bare wood to fill pores and voids. Never, ever use a finishing material that contains polyurethane or epoxy on an antique, as plastics are much more difficult to remove when the time comes for future repairs and restorations.



On this stock I apply six or seven thin coats, rubbing each back to fill imperfections using #0000 steel wool. In the initial coats I apply a glaze to all repair lines and ragged holes that were filled with dyed epoxy to cloud the finish and hide the repair. Here Burnt Umber and Burnt Sienna provide the color match I�m looking for. The edges of the glazed areas are feathered and allowed to dry, then can be feathered again using #0000 steel wool dipped in mineral spirits. The final finish coat is applied relatively thick and allowed to cure for a week before rubbing out using #0000 steep wool lubricated with a high-end, hard carnauba wax. Renaissance Wax or Kiwi Neutral Shoe Polish are good choices.



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