doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DIY Gunsmithing @ doublegunshop.com Unusual stock woods.

I seem to remember persimmon is also know as white ebony and is related to that tree family. Am I correct or dreaming?

Never heard that Sam. Only thing interesting I know about it is that persimmon was used to make the drivers heads on golf clubs.

SRH

I did a little reading, Sam, and it is indeed known as white ebony. It is Diospyrus Virginiana, which is the same genus as black ebony. However, white ebony from Southeast Asia and Laos is Diospyrus Embryopteris.

There are around 400 species of Diospyrus, but only one in the United States.......... that being Persimmon.

Thanks............you can teach an old dog new tricks.

SRH

I can recall an article in one of the national gun magazines from maybe the early eighties? A collector had a neat as a pin glass room of identical bolt actions, I think 30-06 Howas, in identical patterned sporter stocks. Each one was in a different wood species, I want to say over a hundred different, but it's hazy at this point. Eccentric but interesting, it just came to mind with the topic.

Stan,
I cut some Black Locust when I was building my house , and had it sawed up into 1 by and 2 bys. It rings like metal also. I wouldn't want to let an action into it.
Mike

Before I got out of the cow business I had a lot of fence to maintain, and I bought split black locust fence posts out of N. Georgia by the hundreds at a time. You'd better put them up and drive the staples into them before they dried completely, or you would have to carry the staples in a bucket of oil, and drive them in oily. That, or you wouldn't get them in the post. Hard stuff, but I don't believe it was in the ballpark with that osage orange.

To get back on topic, I don't consider any of the three..........persimmon, osage orange or black locust, gunstock material.

SRH

Several years ago I had to cut down a bunch of Hawthorns to clear a path for a surveyors transit sight line. That was by far the hardest wood I ever cut, even when green. A very large one would only have a trunk 8 or 10 inches in diameter, but it would take more time to cut through than an oak tree twice the diameter. I actually got a few sparks off the saw chain as if I was hitting nails or other embedded metal. The sharp 6d nail sized Hawthorn needles that went into my hands and right through my boot soles added to the fun. I burned the wood not knowing that it makes great tool handles because of its' close grain and hardness.

While the Hawthorne wood is hardly suitable for gun stocks, I did buy one I Grade Syracuse Lefever that was stocked in what appears to be white oak. Whoever did the work did a very nice job, and all of the inletting and details of the exterior including the checkering and the flutes at the nose of the comb were a duplicate of an original factory walnut stock. It is stained a walnut color, but it is clearly oak. I wish I knew the story behind that stock.

Although classified as a softwood, I've always wondered how Pacific yew would work as a gunstock. I cut a chuck from a rather large tree years ago and it was very hard. At the time I was thinking I'd make some pistol grips out of it but never got around to it. I know it does make up into a nice bow.

Boyers love Pacific Yew. I saw lots of it in slash piles from clear cuts in Oregon in the 1970s and 80s, whole trees. Madrone as well.
I still have some Madrone longrifle blanks I had cut back in the 80s. Sorta like fruit wood. Short grained, pink colored and very plain. I made a few longrifle stocks from it and stained them dark.