C'mon ed. Smith guns are not the topic, and this is the design defect that we have discussed many times
I'm surprised that the Preacher is just jumping to conclusions based upon a picture of the small surface area at the head of an L.C. Smith stock. This is exactly the type of knee-jerk observation that he criticized me about in the current barrel burst thread.
Just think, if he wasn't wasting time attempting to discredit me for simply using my eyes and stating the obvious, he could be engaging in "Wood Stress Analysis"to find the true cause of shotgun stock failures.
Why, he could spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to hire some wood research facility to analyze gun stock breaks. He could start Threads with photos of broken stocks, and photomicrographs of the fracture areas. He could impress us with descriptions of "waves in the sand" and other phenomena. He could lament the valuable knowledge we might glean from missing chunks and splinters. He could even Copy-and-paste a bunch of links to things that have little or nothing to do with the subject, to create the illusion that he is a big-time gunstock expert and guru. He might even use some big scientific words he doesn't understand, just to dazzle people who are easily fooled.
But simply stating the obvious as he did here is a missed golden opportunity to be something he isn't. What an incredible faux pas!
Incidentally, of the three Parkers I own, one has been restocked due to the aforementioned design flaw, and another has a screw through the cheeks to repair a split. I see a lot of these "American Purdey's" with screws, pins, stove bolts, and dowels through the cheeks. My Syracuse Lefevers don't have that problem. But thin, fragile wood above and below the sideplates is a major weak point in that brand. It remains to be seen how the plastic stocked guns of today will fare in 100 years.
