Exhibition grade wood

[GARD72977]

I'm going to sell half the guns in the safe to have a CPA Stevens built. I have been looking at high grade wood. I know I want checkering. Sometimes the wood just overpowers everything especially with color case hardened frame.

Kind of thinking about blued frame and the best wood I can afford.

[1Hawkeye]

Just remember that exhibition grade wood is great to look at but it may not have the strength of a plainer grade of wood.
Treebone carving has a good section on his website about wood grains and there strengths. I know what you mean about high grade wood
I'm a big fan of curly maple myself.

[Dryball]

Sounds like a great project. One of my friends just got done building one for his grandson with ex. wood. He did a schnabel foretip and did the fish-belly stock...and checkered. I think what set his receiver and gun off is he rust blued the blued barrel and french grayed the receiver but case hardened would be just as beautiful. Who cares what others say...it's what you like.

[marlinman93]

I've heard and read a lot about wood that has lots of figure or burl, possibly having defects that can show up later, or under recoil. I personally haven't seen much of that though. Have a number of 135+ year old guns with presentation grade wood, plus some I've built new with the same grade wood, and not had issues.
I don't personally think high grade wood distracts from a case colored frame, and I also wouldn't order a blued frame on any clone of an old style action. Case coloring was a deluxe finish, and on some guns it was a special order extra. So if I wanted a once in a lifetime special gun, I'd surely want casehardened frame, and high grade wood.
This one is birdseye maple and cased:


This one is high grade walnut and cased:

[Dryball]

wow! Beautiful Shutzens

[725]

stunning

[021]

Awesome guns!!!!!!!

[tdoyka]

wow!!! thems some nice wood!!!

[johnson1942]

have your stock made out of oregon quilted maple, nothing more beautiful or stunning to look at than oregon quilted maple. buy a piece of it off of the internet and then have a co. that precuts stocks for your gun cut the stock for you then you can finish it. my CPA 45/70 has a tiger stripe maple stock with a solid ebony fore stock . i made the fore stock my self and finished the tiger stripe stock my self. check out oregon quilted maple, it is beautiful.

[Don McDowell]

The wood CPA puts on their rifles is awfully nice wood.

[Elias Graves]

While figured wood is definitely harder to work, any weaknesses in the wood caused by the figuring won't affect the function of the gun. You're not asking it to hold up 400 pound fannies all day lol.

[LynC2]

MY CPA 38-50 has some nice wood on it also.

[Chill Wills]

Very nice Lynn! Even CPA standard wood is a grade better than what one would expect and this, of course is great wood.

Lynn, Did you complete it yourself? Any plans for checkering?

[dave roelle]

Make a call to Cecil Fredi in Las Vegas before you finalize your choice

http://www.gunstockblanks.com/


Dave

[LynC2]

Very nice Lynn! Even CPA standard wood is a grade better than what one would expect and this, of course is great wood.

Lynn, Did you complete it yourself? Any plans for checkering?

Yes, I got it unfinished and did a bit of sanding and applied enough finished to shoot it. I am going to wait for warmer weather to do the last bit. I am up in the air about checkering.
Lyn

[marlinman93]

Although I have occasionally supplied the wood to the stock maker to do a 90% inletted stock, I was always warned that any imperfections inside the wood would be my problem, and I'd have tio pay for his inletting work regardless of whether the wood was good or bad.
The advantage of buying your wood from those who will be shaping it, is if it's got a bad spot the stock maker tosses it, and eats the loss. Unless you're sure the wood you have is perfect, I wouldn't supply my own wood.
Then add to the cost of that wood, shipping to the stock maker, and it gets even spendier! The 3 stocks I supplied wood for were all free blanks from a friend, so no cost to me. Made it a little easier to accept whatever might come of the work later.

[oldred]

Sometimes even a bit of firewood looks decent, the wood for these guns came from a tree that was in the process of being chopped up for firewood when I happened up on it! I managed to get several good pieces out of it but unfortunately I was too late to save it all.

Not a very good pic of the big one and the figure at the rear of the stock is washed out by the light, I chose to have figure in the butt portion only and straight grain in the wrist because of fear of cracking from recoil. The little one is only a 22 mag so strength for recoil was not an issue.




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[M-Tecs]

Make a call to Cecil Fredi in Las Vegas before you finalize your choice

http://www.gunstockblanks.com/


Dave

Didn't know of him. Thanks.

[Mossy Oak]

That is mighty fine looking wood you all, thanks for posting them.
Joe

[Wayne Smith]

Generally, the fancier the wood the less you want checkering, the plainer the wood the more you want checkering.