Laminated wood blanks for Rifle Stocks

**Brenneke** · 17-10-2019, 14:24

Originally Posted by Toxxyc

https://safarioutdoor.co.za/stock-bo...te-bk-065.html

OK thanks got it
Never really liked those -- too GARISH and unnatural for me
A proper natural wood laminate will look like the real McCoy

**Toxxyc** · 17-10-2019, 15:07

Ask them if they can't get more natural colours. You get some properly "bland" colours in laminate. For me, laminate is supposed to "shine", so the GARISH colours is something I find properly attractive... :D

**Andrew Leigh** · 17-10-2019, 15:14

The attraction with laminate is that you can really tart up you long gun if that is your thing. Flip I love that Forest Camo or that Autumn colour scheme I think they are called.

For me there is no in between, either a nice walnut with good figure or a garish in your face laminate. To buy a wood coloured laminate is simple defeating the object for me.

Will still put that Forest Camo on my 6.5mm, when I tart it up for shooting long. Still have too many other projects to complete.

**Brenneke** · 17-10-2019, 15:46

Originally Posted by Andrew Leigh

For me there is no in between, either a nice walnut with good figure or a garish in your face laminate. To buy a wood coloured laminate is simple defeating the object for me.

A proper laminate using the right wood and done properly looks very much like the real thing -- the laminate joins can hardly be seen ...
Aesthetic aside a good laminate has other functional benefits.

**janfred** · 17-10-2019, 16:04

If you buy a laminate blank, does it matter what wood it is? It's not like you can identify the species and origin of the wood by looking at it.

For a laminate to have the strength, the layers are bonded with the grain 90° apart. Not really unobtrusive if there are curves. Also does not show depth like a proper piece of wood if I can pit it like that.

**Sean KZN** · 17-10-2019, 18:26

The principle of making a laminate is pretty simple, tooling up for it would be another story.

As a niche market, the niche is getting smaller.

Marine ply would work but you would have to glue 2 sheets together to get the thickness require.

I do like the natural laminate look, but that niche is already very small.

**Againstthegrains** · 17-10-2019, 22:30

Walnut is used as rifle stocks for good reasons. It has an excellent strength to weight ratio, a dense grain that allows it to be worked without splitting or chipping, and you can get some beautiful patterns in the wood. There are other woods out there that have similar properties, but walnut is the best known and the most widely available.

As for indigenous woods, there are a few gunsmiths out there that do experiment with different indigenous woods, but I don't think they will be cheap.

If you love working with wood I think it must be the most rewarding thing to find a piece of indigenous wood, identify the grain and knots etc and choose the right way to cut it and then shape and inlet and bed your rifle, in a way that you can call it your own. You may have to try a lot of different pieces from different species until you find something that works.

I have a friend that found a piece of drift wood on the beach in the Tsitsikama area, and when he scraped the outside layer, it turned out to be a good hardwood inside. He carried the log home, and worked it into a stock. He discovered it was stinkwood, and it had very similar properties to walnut. The stock turned out well, probably because the wood came well seasoned from bobbing around in the ocean, which is another point. I think a lot of the local woods are not well seasoned and may split or warp after making the stock.

I think if I had to buy a large bore rifle I would try something very heavy, like lead wood, to try to add weight to slow down the recoil.

**Brenneke** · 20-10-2019, 07:31

I agree as regards Walnut as a single wood for a stock -- good walnut is becoming scarce and IS imported and IS expensive

One can even make a laminate using walnut
The benefit of a laminate is that the wood is not affected by humidity or weather -- shrinkage and warpage
Using the correct woods it might even be termite / mold / environmentally resistant.

So far I have had NO replies to my many emails to timber companies = SA OPS NORMAL !

ANY US stocks that are over US$100 are export restricted -- you have to go through an SA importer = BIG bucks

Have a look at my other post ....

**Brenneke** · 20-10-2019, 07:35

Originally Posted by Sean KZN

As a niche market, the niche is getting smaller.

Not sure about this statement ?
What else are people using ?
Synthetics -- plastic / fibreglass / carbon ?
Any idea how much these cost ?
A nice McMiillan will set you back US$640 .....
SA manufacturers are not far behind !

**The Beast** · 20-10-2019, 16:51

Laminate stocks has many advantages strength, stability and a unique look that can be very varied. Laminating wood is not that difficult, think of it as wood Damascus. You can use different colors either natural or stained, and different thicknesses and even varying the thickness of the laminate throughout the stock. A laminated stock is laminated with all the wood grain in relatively the same direction. Cross lamination like in plywood would reduce the strength of the stock. Glue is also really imported and you want to have a ridged glue that does not creep. Your standard white wood glue that works for most wood applications are not suitable here. Gluing can be as quick as 10min to 2 days depending on the glue used.

As mentioned many woods are suitable for stocks, but Walnut has proven itself as the benchmark of quality and durability. There are some woods that are tougher than Walnut, Ash for instance and Oak is both Tough and hard, but due to their structure they do not finish near as nice. Beach is a very suitable timber and it's evenly grained and 1/3 of the price of furniture grade Walnut, but it's rather boring in it's consistent uninteresting grain.
As for African timbers the first thing is drying, most of the African timbers are not properly dried and this leads to many issues down the line. But a bigger problem is that there is no sustainable sourcing of these timbers. I know that in 50 years time there will be more Oak produced than today, By that time you probably will not hear of Kiaat or rosewood anymore.

The biggest hurdle is time. Labor costs on artisan work like this is not cheap.

Laminating of furniture grade Walnut may well be the best of both worlds.