doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Replacing a horn forend tip ( for Ken61 )

Okay so Ken61 asked if i would do a little thread on how i go about replacing a horn forend tip that may be lost, damaged, or replaced with something like wood filler.

First off please use this thread as a spring board for your own restorations, there are many ways to go about doing this I'm sure, this is just the method i have used successfully. I judge it as successful through two things, 1) its pretty 2) its strong.

As with all DIY tasks on guns the quality and attention to detail throughout your work will dictate the quality of the final piece.

Secondly i did not take the pictures with the intention of doing a step by step guide so there are gaps in the photo's and i will just have to describe as best i can what i did.


You will need to remove whatever has been used to fill the void, which might be anything from wood dust to pine just glued in there in the days when repairs had to be functional not pretty. I suggest this is done carefully either by hand using a coping saw or preferably with a Hegner saw.

Now i understand some horn finals are dovetailed in and some are all the way through the wood, i would suggest for the purposes of this repair to cut all the way through the wood.

In most cases its simply not worth spending the time carving horn to try and fit the gap; if you really feel it is worth it i would suggest cutting the buffalo horn oversize for the existing gap and filing the draft into the horn then fitting the oversize final to the forend by sooting it into position.



Here we can see i have removed the wood filler by cutting a V in the forend on the Hegner Saw.


You can buy buffalo Horn easily in blocks on ebay, buy a piece of suitable thickness One block will do many forends.

To transfer the V shape you cut into your forend onto the buffalo horn the easiest way is to lay the forend on the horn block and blow white chalk dust into the V which will give you an exact copy of the V layout on the horn block. You can now use the Hegnar saw, coping saw, or band saw to cut out your horn final.



This was the fit i got straight from cutting, i cleaned the edges up with a file a little but since its going to be glued in place and the gun is of little value i was not going to spend hours filing the horn for a perfect fit, any imperfections will be hidden but if it were a finer gun i might spend a little longer improving the fit.




I Mixed up some slow setting poxy with some powdered black pigment added to color the epoxy black which would hide any imperfection in the fit. I held the horn in place using bicycle inner tube while the glue set, do not use clamps as you are effectively going to end up pushing a hard wedge into an old dry piece of wood.



Leave the glue to cure for 24 hours before working the horn.



Then you can start to saw and file to remove the excess. I just used a half round file to follow the curves on the inside of the for end to allow the horn to fit against the barrels.



You can then work the horn down with files into pretty much any shape you want, they can be elaborate but in this case the gun was a simple heavy barreled wild fowling work horse so a simple curve was just fine.



You can then go on to restore the forend as normal.



Its a pretty simple method but it looks a damn sight better than that wood filler did and the horn polishes up really nicely. I did that repair sometime in 2014 and its still solid.

Great! Thanks.

Ken

That is a first class job. Bobby

Excellent write-up and pictures. Good looking job. Would a similar method also work for Ebony? Thanks.
Chuck

Don't see why not chuckster, its really quite straight forward just think a bit about your material prep, some people suggest thoroughly de - greasing materials like buffalo horn before gluing, and now i come to think of it i did give it a good wipe down with acetone.

I have just about finished doing this gun its had a full re join ( forend on or off, if the barrels are closed no wobble ) ribs re layed, action tightened ( attention to the underbolt lever is now right of center and the barrels are tight against the face. Forend has a good bearing but the gun opens softly under the weight of the barrels. ) Its also had work to the lever work and new top lever spring made. Still needs some attention to the hammers, locks, and the barrels need browning, and i might try a butectomy on it as the DAH is just to much for me; fine if i am sat down but stood up i just get a really inconsistent mount and i may convert to a straight grip as I'm not much a fan of pistol grips.

Thing that lets it down was the owner two previous to myself had ago at putting it back on face using some serious peening and ruined the dolls head ( it looks horrid now ) so i don't know weather to try and build the dolls head up with weld which just sounds like I'll be spending hours and hours filing and welding and filing, or to just cut the dolls head off and fill the hole in the action with weld. I know the latter is done, however i think i will go with the former, i don't want to affect the metallurgy of the action.


Ebrall bros of shrewsbury heavy barreled wild fowling gun, choked second barrel.

There is endless work trying to put a worn battered gun right still to do is
Barrels browned.
File recess in extractor for firing pins.
Butectomy ( possibly )
Straight grip conversion.
Weld the axle holes up in the hammer and re position them ( wobbly hammers )
Bit of work on the lock work - faulty rebounding mechanism.
Probably will look at getting the bores polished and honed try try and get some of the pits out too.

Anyway its much more pleasant to shoot now, the guns a work horse.

I have to admit that the prospect of shaping the insert into the notch had been what was holding up my attempting the repair. I hadn't thought of simply removing the indented part of the notch. This makes sense, in the absence of a master pattern of the insert. Modern adhesives like epoxy will certainly do the trick, even with Ebony, which is prone to shrinkage.

One modification I'll use is protecting the forend wood with a first layer of blue painters tape, followed with a layer of metal HVAC tape. When rough shaping the insert, I'll actually sand down through the metal tape, until the blue tape starts to show. This allows a better degree of rough sanding, so there's little chance of removing excess wood. This also works when installing recoil pads when you don't want to refinish the buttstock.

Thanks
Ken

I have a for end to make from scratch for a pin fire which previously had a horn final in the for end and i will be doing the same method.

The guns Westley Richards currently produce with horn for end finals are set right through the wood as apposed to inlet into the wood, the horn is then carved with files and chisels to fit the underside of the barrels for the same immaculate wood to metal fit they achieve with wood.