Monday, January 26, 2015

A Little Butt Work


One thing is for sure - there's always something interesting going on in my shop. 


A few weeks ago, a family walked in with a wooden rifle stock - cut into two pieces! 


They'd shortened the stock so their son could shoot it more comfortably. But now the son was grown and they wanted it re-attached. At least they kept the piece they'd removed!

Even though they asked me to simply glue it back on, I felt that there was a better solution. Gluing end grain to end grain makes a weak connection, so I felt like it needed to be beefed up with something mechanical. Plus - the seam was going to look ragged, so I thought it best to accentuate it, rather than hide it.  

I managed to track down a piece of aluminum (thanks, Lupe!) and roughly cut out the shape I needed. I planned to attach it with screws running in both directions, for maximum strength. So I screwed and epoxied the plate onto the end, 



and then drilled some opposing holes. 


Then I did a final attachment using some long beefy screws. There's no way this butt is ever coming off again! 

Aluminum sands like a dream, so I sanded everything smooth and blended the stock back into shape. 



A little more sanding, some stain and finish and this family is back in business!












3 comments:

Rob said...

i'm not big into guns,
so on a strickly woodworking aspect, the alum. accent makes it look GREAT.

nicely done as always..
btw. stumpled upon the article of you in the LV paper in my news feed of woodworking articles. Congratulations on the coverage!!!

Wood It Is! said...

Thanks Rob! Seems like we've been getting a lot of coverage lately - can't complain about that at all. Hope you're doing well!

John Frame said...

That patch came out realy good. Camp fire stories and memories. Every time he pulls that rifle out of its case and sees that patch he will remember those early hunting trips with dad.