JB Weld

[Hooker53]

Hello guys. I'm Installing a front ebony tip on a forearm of a small rifle. I'v done this with liquid hide glue. Title bond II and several other glues along with the 1/4" dowels. I do t have a lot of room to use the dowels on this one and was wondering if I could use the 24 hour slow cure on these woods. I know it would be ok on the walnut but not sure about the ebony. Would like to hear from anyone that's used JB on these types of woods. Thanks.

Roy
Hooker53

[country gent]

The natural oils in the ebony may create some bonding issues with the JB weld. abetter soulution may be a small "biscut" inlet into both parts to increase bond area and strength. Another issue is with the bond thickness of the JB weld it may show more than the others.

[rancher1913]

the urethane glues might work better, like gorilla glue. you wet both pieces and then glue it up, the urethane is water activated and man does it hold.

[NY_Treeguy]

I have not done this for a stock but I have glued ebony. Wipe down real well with acetone, use any of the titebond yellow glues. (TB, TBII, TBIII)

Biggest problem is that you will be gluing end grain to end grain...the grain sucks the glue up leaving a weak joint. Do you have enough room for small dowels? Even 3/16 or 1/8 will help.

[waksupi]

Your better off to use a two part epoxy on ebony, and wipe the contact surface with laquer thinner before joining the woods.No gorilla Glue. It will leave a small, but definite yellow line.

[725]

I've put ebony tips on a couple stocks. waksupi is right. Epoxy them together and try an get some kind of dowel in there. I prefer oak for it's strength and ease of gluing. If it's a really small area, even the shaft of a finishing nail would help.

[knifemaker]

I agree with Waksupi. The two part epoxy such as Devcon or acru-glass will make a stronger bond then JB Weld for shear strength. Just get the longer set up time, not the 5 minute epoxy for better strength. Also if you do not have room for a wood dowel, get a small diameter brass rod and drill & epoxy two of them into the stock. On the ebony, due to it's natural oil, you need to wipe the glue joint surface down with acetone to remove this surface oil coating for a better bond. I do that all the time on my knife handles using ebony or other high oil content woods.

[bangerjim]

You did not state which species of ebony you are planning on using.

Macassar and Gabon are two different ebony woods and will act differently.

Both should be cleaned VERY well with acetone several times over a period of a few days to remove ALL natural oils. They will seep thru the woods, so cleaning over a period of time is important.

Cyano glue with it's setting accelerant will work after degreasing, ALWAYS use accelerant when using cyano glues or they do not bond properly.

Hygroscopic glues like Gorilla probably will not bond permanently. I would not use it. It is good for gluing carp together around the house, but not for precision or fine woodworking procedures.

The TiteBond family of glues are excellent......for standard non-oily woods. Ebony, teak and other exotics are tricky.

I would recommend what I do for furniture and antique repairs when unsure: try a smaple! Best way to test results.

I many times use custom minature biscuts, dowels, and pins.

Good luck with your project.

bangerjim

[Der Gebirgsjager]

In my opinion JB Weld has very little application to stock work. Have you considered using a couple of the smallest size Brownell's brass stock repair pins as dowels. I have attached fore end tips using them by drilling an appropriate sized hole into the end of the stock and screwing in the pins, then inserting the smooth ends that are driven by the drill chuck into matching holes in the fore end tip, with some Accra Glas Gel pushed down into the holes before the tip is placed over the pins, and also a little between the two parts. There are a couple of real drawbacks to JB Weld, one being the color which will appear in any crack or gap and is very noticeable. Once on, you'll probably never want to remove the tip anyway, but should you decide to do so for some reason it will be almost impossible. Here's some photos of a stock bedding job Bubba did. He must have used some sort of release in the action area because I was able to get the action out of the stock, but he neglected to do so with the butt plate. As you can see, anywhere the stuff oozed out of the cracks or gaps it is very visible.

165143165144The butt plate will never come off. I'm probably going to use my band saw on this poor thing and see if I can't cut some slabs out of it for pistol grips.

[Mk42gunner]

Too bad, that looks to have been a rather pretty Krag stock.

Have you tried heat on the buttplate to break down the JB Weld? I don't know if it will work or not, but a low flame from a propane torch will loosen a lot of two part epoxies.

Robert

[Hooker53]

All good Info guys and thanks. Banger, Gabon is the choice here. After I posted, I did hit some other wood working forums and all the info there go right along with wht all you fine folks are saying. I will try some of this and thanks again.

Roy
Hooker53

[gnoahhh]

I'll agree with all the comments regarding glue. It's two part epoxy preceded by de-oiling with acetone or lacquer thinner for me. I deviate a little bit regarding the mechanical lock for ebony fore end tip attachment though.

I do a simple end grain to end grain glue up, with the channel roughed into the ebony beforehand. Then after the epoxy cures I chuck it in the mill and rout a 3/8"x3/8" groove in the barrel channel starting about 1 1/2" behind the joint and extending a similar distance forward into the ebony. Then a 3/8" square by x long piece of hardwood is epoxied into it. (Round both ends to match the radius'ed ends of the groove left by the mill.) Finish inletting the barrel channel. Done. You would have to wail on it with a hammer to break it off.

I suppose you could achieve the same thing with a router table, though I never tried it. Cutting the mortise by hand with chisels might break the new end grain glue joint unless you were very careful.

I lost a little faith in dowels over the years, preferring to use biscuits or mortise and tenon joints whenever I can. This is a form of M&T joint- a floating tenon.

To get an invisible joint, mix the two part epoxy, wet out the wood halves with it first (to get maximum soak into the end grain using relatively thin epoxy), then thicken it with colloidal silica (the white floc included in Acraglass kits for example). At that point you can mix in some ebony sanding dust until the epoxy is black, then continue with the glue-up. I'm not too careful cleaning up the squeeze out- sanding it away later is my way of guaranteeing zero voids in the joint that might show up later.

Just another way to skin the same cat!

[Der Gebirgsjager]

Hi Robert,
I thought about the heat idea, and may give it a try, but don't want to get the entire thing smoking due to the oils in the wood. So I'll probably cut a piece off the butt with the plate intact and then work on that separately. It's for certain something unsual will be needed to salvage the butt plate, because as you can see the JB is visible everywhere, around the screws, around the trap door, around the outside edge. Real shame. About all I was able to save was the action, as the barrel had been cut to about 17 inches and had this ingenious front sight job. As far as I can figure the sight is an original, perhaps the one that was original to this rifle, and the barrel section it was on that was cut off was then sectioned and the top part reattached to the shortened barrel. Furthermore....it seems to be on backward! I'm just waiting now for someone to say, "Oh yeah...I recognize that rifle! My cousin Bubba did that back in '82." ;)
165272

[Ballistics in Scotland]

The first thing about working with ebony is that you might be a lot better off with black buffalo horn, which isn't hard to find nowadays. It doesn't crack, and it has that same very slight grain which distinguishes it from plastic.

I think the attachment would be stronger if you make the mating surfaces curved. I shape the tip on the roller of my bench belt sander, and then shape the wood to match with graphite dust for spotting the surface.

I think heat applied to the centre of that buttplate would unstick it without damaging the wood. I'm a great believer in those little gas torches that you fill from a lighter gas cylinder. Anyway, what are the chances that Bubba knew about degreasing? I also think you will ten times as often be annoyed by not having time to do an epoxy join correctly, as you will be annoyed by having to wait a few hours for it to set. So I much prefer the slow-setting epoxies,, which are stronger and resist heat better. The last is very important for a barrel bedding job.

[Mk42gunner]

Bubba never fails to amaze me.

Did he also use JB to reattach the front sight? It almost looks like I can see a bit of grey at the muzzle end.

I'd try taking the sight off before I tried the buttplate. And when I got to it, I would try heating just the screw first.

I admit I can't remember trying to take metal parts that were intentionally epoxied to wood apart; but I have taken sights and scope bases off, and it didn't seem to take enough heat to char wood, or get it smoking. And if by chance the metal wasn't degreased as BiS brought up, it should be even easier.

Good luck,

Robert

[Ballistics in Scotland]

When metal to metal is involved, epoxy becomes brittle to a blow if you freeze it. But apart from the problem of freezer size, I don't know if that would apply when one of the materials is wood.

[KCSO]

I always degrease my ebony with carbon tet to get a good bond and I use acra glass and let it set up 48 hours.

[BigEyeBob]

I had to remove a piece of wood from a stock that had a big splinter of its original self glued back with some type of epoxy glue .It was badly mismatched and a very nasty looking repair . I soaked the butt stock in general purpose paint thinner for a couple of days and the epoxy turned to mush and I was able to remove the piece off the stock with no further damage to the wood.
I know from experience that devcon liquid steel can be dissolved with the same thinner. Maybe worth a try on the butt plate , shame to have to cut up that nice flame grained piece of stock wood.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

That is interesting information. Was it ordinary white spirit, a.k.a. turpentine substitute, or cellulose thinner? It might harm the wood, and surely would its finish. which could be worthwhile if it works. If the member of the intellectual classes did the job without gluing the buttplate trap shut, you could leave a pool of thinners there, covered with tape to stop evaporation, to see what happens.

[John Taylor]

I always degrease my ebony with carbon tet to get a good bond and I use acra glass and let it set up 48 hours.
I thought carbon tet was outlawed years ago. It was used in fire extinguishers for a long time and is a great cleaning compound but it gets in your body and can cause problems down the road. At one time it was in glass balls like an oversized Christmas tree ornament and was designed to be thrown into fires. Sears had some pressurized cans about the size of a soda can that had a little pull tab on top. Most common was the brass hand pump about 14" long and 2.5" diameter.

[BigEyeBob]

That is interesting information. Was it ordinary white spirit, a.k.a. turpentine substitute, or cellulose thinner? It might harm the wood, and surely would its finish. which could be worthwhile if it works. If the member of the intellectual classes did the job without gluing the buttplate trap shut, you could leave a pool of thinners there, covered with tape to stop evaporation, to see what happens.

General purpose paint thinner used in the automotive repair trade , I will thin enamel and acrylic automotive paints .
I doubt it would harm the wood as Ive soaked other oil soaked stocks in it to remove the oil . I use acetone as well for the same purpose .
Acetone may soften the JB Weld as well. Ive never used JB Weld so I cant say from experience.

[bangerjim]

Carbon tet is pretty much extinct these days.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_tetrachloride

I have one of those old early 1900's extinguishers still charged with the stuff! And those glass globes are highly collectable in the "antique fire stuff" world. Saw a dozen of them in an antique store in Paso Robles recently.

It is an extremely dangerous material as has been found in recent decades. I would never use it today, knowing what it does to the human body! C-Tet, TCE, toluene, benzene and even MEK (to some extent) are going the way of the dodo. All excellent solvents and cleaners I use to use in the machine shops workshops back when I bought them in 5 gallon cans!