The first thing is to repair the crack in the head of the stock though after removing the action a lot of the wood was found to be saturated with oil. In this saturated state it would be just a total waste of time and effort trying to glue the crack because Epoxy will not work at its best on oil contaminated surfaces. So the head will soak in 50/50 mix Xylene and cellulose thinners (I choose to use Xylene and cellulose thinners because this mix works exceedingly well also I prefer the smell as opposed to other solvents such as Acetone) for some days to remove the oil before I glue the crack in the stocks head.

In this photograph you will see that I used a small toolmakers clamp (sometimes known as steel fingers) in reverse function to open up the crack, by opening the crack in this controlled way over a couple of hours enables the wood to flex without the crack traveling much further.


I always use something to pull the Epoxy adhesive through a crack to make sure all areas are covered from top to bottom with adhesive, there is another alternative to dental floss (in the picture) which is mono filament fishing line either one works well. Now after the adhesive has set I decided to make and fit a Brass support in the shape of a square staple whose legs are fitted in holes drilled deeply in the wood each side of the crack and fitted with Epoxy Adhesive, this will greatly reduce the chances of the crack reopening in the future and will be conveniently out of site being covered by the trigger guard.



While the Epoxy cured I took this time to adjust the stocks profile at the head.





When I removed the stock I also found one of the action pins had not been completely driven home its top is marked in white in the photograph, the reason for this was too much wood had been removed from the inside and outside of this area when the action was fitted to the stock.



The altering the pins position was a very crude attempt to correct things by forcing the wood outwards even so the wood was still well below the actions surface in the area indicated by the yellow tape.






The only lessons in my life I truly did learn from where the ones I paid for!