Thanks for posting the pictures skeettx.
Tonight I took the stock apart and got a good look at the break. I could not have placed the break in a worse place. No room for a fillet reinforcement, no place for pins or dowels. Cracks in the wrist going up an down in the center of the stock as well as across the wrist. Only good news is that all the parts are there.
Worse than the break is the quality of the blank used. The stock is very, very light with a lack of density and grain flow that goes as much side to side as longwise. I suspect you could blame most of the failure on the poor strength due to such a balsa like piece of wood. I can repair it, but it will not last. This is the stress point when the gun is shot and when the gun is opened and closed. the fact that the wrist is very slender only makes it weaker. Worse in a way is the number and extent of inletting this gun has from this point forward. There is no way to reinforce it. Most of the area from here forward is 50-60% removed by the inletting. Even if I tried to use a fillet approach you might as well start over. Hard to make air stronger.
So now I have to deal with what I have to work with. First I am going to epoxy it back into original condition for a pattern stock. Then I am going to pick out the very densest French or English walnut blank in my rack and copy the front third of the stock allowing extra wood left in the grip area and then fit it to the receiver. Then the final step will be to cut this stock apart and do a butt splice so I can save the rear portion of the stock. That way I will have the fancy exhibition butt stock and get away from this pithy wrist area.
Shade matching should be straight forward unless I choose some blank that is ten shades darker or lighter. The checkering will allow most if not all of the work to be hidden. I am going to replace the checkered butt stock end with either heel and toe plates or a leather covered pad. Deciding factor might end up being the LOP.
Just your typical project gun. Go in with eyes wide open, expecting the worse and finding out you had no real clue for how bad it gets. Usually the wood work is the thing which goes faster and any metal work take the longest for me. But in this case the metal work was simple and fast. The stock just a little longer. A project I expected to take a few dozen hours just got a extra zero in it I suspect. So let this be a lesson run like Hell from all projects.
