doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Beavertail fore-end - splinter

I prefer splinter fore-end to beavertail. I´d appreciate your opinion if it is possible to modify an existing beavertail to splinter in a way, that it looks like it has always been a splinter. Any idea of the required working hours? Or should I have a new splinter been made, maybe existing metal parts could be reused?

Not a bad job to make this a splinter, but do you want to? Not knowing what gun this is on, you may consider watching Ebay,gun dealers, parts dealers, etc. for a splinter. If you make this one a splinter, you will probably be sending it out to be checkered. I will admit, I like a splinter much more than a beaver tail myself, mostly for the looks. I do wish I had a extra forearm in a beaver tail for one of my Bakers'. Those barrels are hot after a round of trap.

It looks like higher quality Basque offering. Why nix that lovely checkering job for no gain? If you shoot sliver forend gun a lot you will need a leather glove or that fugly slip-on thingy!
Some guns like my early BSS beg for slimming job (man, that thing was fugly) , but this one looks quite lovely.

As Dave said, it's not all that difficult to convert from BT to splinter. And checkering a forend isn't all that difficult to do. Overall, I've found making forends for SxS guns a lot easier than stocks. So you might want to keep the BT as is and either make or have made a separate splinter. Also, it depends on the gun. The one you show looks to be pretty nice.

Pokslok: I too prefer the splinter for looks and in most shooting situations. However, the beavertail is good at protecting your hand when shooting targets, and some guys prefer the feel of it too. It's your gun to do with as you please, of course, but I can't advocate destroying all those hours of craftsmanship by altering the beautiful forend pictured. It certainly wouldn't be a paying proposition. Better to have a second forend made, as you suggest, using the same metal parts and keeping the original for possible reinstallation at a later date. (Although expensive, I'm guessing you could even have someone make a second set of irons, so you could swap forends at will.) Or sell the gun to a guy who'll love it and acquire one configured the way you want. The safest choice, if you can afford to do so, is to keep the gun and buy another with a splinter. Your tastes may change, and you'll be glad it's still in the safe. TT

Thank you for the replys! In order to maintain the guns value perhaps it would be wise to have a new splinter made using the existing irons and save the bwt. The gun is a Piotti.

Btw, I haven´t managed to locate discussion about the very best shotguns in the world. People, who owned Fabbris, Famars, Purdey, H&H etc. wrote interesting details about the guns. Can anybody help locating the topic (I don´t mean this one: http://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbt...0&fpart=1)?

I'm no fan of beavertails myself but this one is better than most.

Not arguing with Dave, but I will say that stockmakers I've spoken to tend to tell me that it just as much work to make a proper forend as a boxlock buttstock (some have told me it's harder). Different folks find some things easier than others and Dave's experience is personal, my is second hand.

And having made my first foray into checkering, forends, to me, are harder to get right than a butt, even with simple patterns. On a butt you're pretty much working on one plane whereas with a forend you are working on three, up one side, across the bottom and down the other. I have a Marlin lever with a squirrely looking checkered forend.

I have altered many forends from beavertail to splinter. In most cases the major "flaw" is the way the inletting looks when done. A beavertail fored fits around the barrels and therefore the gap under the barrels are not evident to the eye. A splinter forend is fitted under the barrels and the fitting is closer in order to get a proper lock up. In a perfect world there would be no difference between the two. Reality is that what you can't see you don't complain about. FWIW, have a new forend made instead of altering the old one.

Good decision. Keep the existing wood and have a new one made with the existing iron. As for making forends for SxS's, , my personal experience was that they were simpler and less demanding than stocks. That said, I've only made a few and those were for Fox SW's. Those had simple iron and fit and were for extractor guns. The one pictured has a bit more inletting, especially the tang at the latch. Ejectors could complicate things more.

I will admit that the forend I'm working on for a Superposed is turning out to be a real bear. I hope I never do another one. A lot more complicated than the stock.

Forends are much harder to do, as a rule, because they have more surface area to fit against, multiple areas of inletting for hardware and nice ones get very thin by the time you are done. Real easy to make a 2X4 club end, very hard to make a trim, thin very well shaped fore end sometimes.

The release on this one has to be fit correctly. If you make it too short it will lock the fore end on the gun and will require the gentle use of a chisel to split the fore end. Then you get to start over again. Happy days, this event is, to put it mildly.

I would have your current forend copied and use that as a basis to make the splinter. Any of the duplicators can do this and the money invested will be well spent.