I had an SKS with an Arcangel synthetic stock. It sat leaning on the rack at the outdoor range for a couple hours. Hot summer day. I picked it up and the stock had warped so bad that I couldn't shoulder it in a way to line the sights up. Also had a Mossburg Maverick and the plastic stock literally fell off. It cracked all the way around the inside at the receiver mounting bolt. Hollow junk to begin with. This was a -20 day so I assumed the cold was a factor...
Are wood stocks ever functionally better than synthetic?
- Thread starter steelgray
- Start date
If resiliency was meant quality synthetic is better if my fugly stick gets dropped or bumped don't care won't gouge, scratch or crack or show as bad or at all. Fancy grade walnut not the best choice for truck guns. https://i.imgur.com/Scx0d7W.jpg
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Ardent
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
Not always 100% clear cut in favour of synthetics for durability, as sanding and refinishing my synthetic stocks isn’t as simple.
When wood shows love and use, I just lightly sand them to remove the finish, iron them with a damp rag to pull the dents, finish sand at 600 then 1500 and re-oil. A good soaked in tung oil job makes the surface incredibly hard and water resistant too. Even after several seasons of being carried and packed a few months a year they still look good. After an overhaul, they look new again.
Yes, synthetics can be bondo’d and sanded, painted. But that’s a more intensive process than refinishing wood. I don’t mind engaging in wood stock overhauls, or some love and use showing on them.
When wood shows love and use, I just lightly sand them to remove the finish, iron them with a damp rag to pull the dents, finish sand at 600 then 1500 and re-oil. A good soaked in tung oil job makes the surface incredibly hard and water resistant too. Even after several seasons of being carried and packed a few months a year they still look good. After an overhaul, they look new again.
Yes, synthetics can be bondo’d and sanded, painted. But that’s a more intensive process than refinishing wood. I don’t mind engaging in wood stock overhauls, or some love and use showing on them.
- Location
- Saskatchewan
There actually IS one hunting activity that in my experience clearly favours wood stocks. Calling animals, especially moose in thick cover.
I have a bit of experience calling moose ( and elk and coyotes etc) and more than once have had the misfortune of spooking an incoming bull with the noise that comes from allowing a tiny twig to scrape along the butt of a synthetic stocked rifle. Those hard, hollow stocks act like the resonating chamber inside of a guitar and amplify the sound. Way too noisy for close quarters calling when you're trying to get the animal to listen for your calls and hunt YOU.
When calling any animals, I wear soft fleece or wool pants, soft soled boots, and carry a wood stocked rifle. If the weather is likely to be bad, I carry a laminate stock rifle. I will never again carry a synthetic stocked rifle for calling critters unless somebody invents one that doesn't make noise when slightly bumped or scraped.
I do have a couple of "tool" rifles that I like and use for extreme conditions and "just in case" backup duty. They are synthetic and stainless steel, and always work. I like that. But I much prefer quiet, warm wood. And because beauty, and feel are actually part of the function for me.
I have a bit of experience calling moose ( and elk and coyotes etc) and more than once have had the misfortune of spooking an incoming bull with the noise that comes from allowing a tiny twig to scrape along the butt of a synthetic stocked rifle. Those hard, hollow stocks act like the resonating chamber inside of a guitar and amplify the sound. Way too noisy for close quarters calling when you're trying to get the animal to listen for your calls and hunt YOU.
When calling any animals, I wear soft fleece or wool pants, soft soled boots, and carry a wood stocked rifle. If the weather is likely to be bad, I carry a laminate stock rifle. I will never again carry a synthetic stocked rifle for calling critters unless somebody invents one that doesn't make noise when slightly bumped or scraped.
I do have a couple of "tool" rifles that I like and use for extreme conditions and "just in case" backup duty. They are synthetic and stainless steel, and always work. I like that. But I much prefer quiet, warm wood. And because beauty, and feel are actually part of the function for me.
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Not always 100% clear cut in favour of synthetics for durability, as sanding and refinishing my synthetic stocks isn’t as simple.
When wood shows love and use, I just lightly sand them to remove the finish, iron them with a damp rag to pull the dents, finish sand at 600 then 1500 and re-oil. A good soaked in tung oil job makes the surface incredibly hard and water resistant too. Even after several seasons of being carried and packed a few months a year they still look good. After an overhaul, they look new again.
Yes, synthetics can be bondo’d and sanded, painted. But that’s a more intensive process than refinishing wood. I don’t mind engaging in wood stock overhauls, or some love and use showing on them.
Would love to hear about that bear hunt, if you don't mind.
Same here...we are splitting hairs when it comes to functionality. My thoughts are that wood does not have to be functionally better, just so long as it is not way less functional, which I have never found to be the case.
I also love refinishing wood, as mentioned above, and hadn't even considered that as the benefit it truly is.
i even seen stainless and wooden rifles and i cant say i liked them ....
- Location
- Saskatchewan
I have two stainless / laminate wood stocked rifles, both Sako 85's. A Kodiak .375 H&H and a Varmint HB .223. Tough, functional, and quiet.
This thread would be a lot shorter if folks knew what the definition of "functionality" was... as framed in the original question. Function doesn't know warm, cold, pretty, ugly, or anything else. It is on, off, stop, or, go. The rest, is romance. Totally understand, as it has been mentioned throughout the thread, it just hasn't been addressed as such, from the opposite side.
There isn't a chunk of wood on the planet that will stand up to the abuse that a synthetic material will, period.
As far as rifles go, will the average, or above average, or even exceptional owner, ever put their rifle through those conditions? Doubtful. Unless neglectful. So from that point, as always, it becomes more of a mater of preference, over function. The true function of the stock is to hold the rifle together, in simple terms, a handle. Is wood "better" than a synthetic? No. But no one will really ever be put in those conditions to find out, so then it's each to their own. And there is never anything wrong with that either. Is there?
R.
There isn't a chunk of wood on the planet that will stand up to the abuse that a synthetic material will, period.
As far as rifles go, will the average, or above average, or even exceptional owner, ever put their rifle through those conditions? Doubtful. Unless neglectful. So from that point, as always, it becomes more of a mater of preference, over function. The true function of the stock is to hold the rifle together, in simple terms, a handle. Is wood "better" than a synthetic? No. But no one will really ever be put in those conditions to find out, so then it's each to their own. And there is never anything wrong with that either. Is there?
R.
I agree with these comments, including the fact that the question of functionality tends to have been overlooked by many posters.
Personally I like really pretty wood, especially on a coffee table, or the paneling in the study of a really nice older home etc. I have been known to buy a certain gun just because I liked its wood. However, I have been turned off by the intrinsic vulnerability of wood. There are lots of stories that bear out wood's vulnerability. I had a friend who got his family heirloom 270 Cooey bolt action custom stocked. The guy who did the work took many months - and I'm sure the job was expensive.
The first day out on the hunt, I was driving my Jeep and my friend piled into the backseat. He shoved his rifle butt first between his feet and under the base of the seat in front of him and IMMEDIATELY put a 10" long gash in the wood - presumably having caught it on some metal bit under the seat. You can say how stupid my friend was to do that etc., but the fact is that wood is REALLY hard to avoid damaging. Another time I had Valmet Hunter - with beautiful wood - sitting on a table at a gun show - where I was selling that Hunter and other stuff. In the blink of an eye, some guy that was looking at a die I was selling fumbled it - and dropped it right on the stock of the Hunter. I never saw that coming.
I'm sure there are others who have stories about how they went out on a hunt and got some scratch in the stock of their rifle - and they had no idea how it happened.
I'd love it if someone could suggest that, sure wood is vulnerable but it is still better because, "if you bed it well it can make you gun more accurate than a synthetic stock or it can handle temperature changes better" or whatever - but that's not what I'm getting. Instead, people say it is prettier - and I know why people say that. However, as noted, that isn't the question.
Don't get me wrong, I like wood stocks too but I hate their vulnerability and really think twice about hunting with any of my nice wood stocked guns. The latter are pretty much safe queens.
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- Location
- Steel Town
I wonder when all these space age synthetic stocks will begin to degrade. I have seen many examples of plastics from the 70's and 80's essentially disintegrate. I have a hard time believing a synthetic stock will last when our kids are old. But I guess for tool guns, nobody cares.
Ardent
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
Wood stormed the beaches of Normandy and jumped by the untold thousands. Suffice to say you can take your wood stocked rifles hunting without fretting.
Funny you should say that. Functionality is defined as the quality of being suited to serve a purpose well. A dozen people can buy or own the same item with each of them having a different purpose in mind for it. If the function for which you purchased a rifle is simply to fire bullets accurately and dependably...and there are obviously many who would agree with you...then, sure, the synthetic stock may be superior, depending upon its quality and resistance to the elements.
But, just as obviously, there are many whom consider the purpose of the rifle to be to cater to an aesthetic sense, to please the eye, and to serve any number of other emotional desires while performing that bland mechanical function. If you are in that camp, then wood is not the equal of synthetic...it is far superior.
Just because synthetic suits the function for which you selected a rifle...doesn't make the same selection correct for someone with different priorities. But telling those whose intended purpose for the rifle differs from yours that they are wrong, and trying to use semantics to prove it...is ridiculous.
There ya go! Thank you.
Ardent
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
No worries, in short, biggest bear I ever guided. Big even by Kodiak standards which is saying something. My hand’s on his shoulder there, his skull all but covered the top of a full sized rubbermaid. I’ll write about the hunt at length one day, but at his closest that bear was a couple meters from me, also the closest I’ve ever been to a grizz. That colours it in far more exciting than it was, he was swimming by my glassing log jam at the time, then got out of the river just downstream. Client made a clean .375 shot that broke the shoulder, we still backed off and gave him long enough to slowly make a coffee before going to check. He grew on the ground unlike all other bears I hunted. Felt a disappointment honestly that sunk in the following days that he was gone, not many like him left. Come to love monsters.
I'm not so sure, you have any data to back that up?
Some exotic woods are ridiculously hard, and have other durable properties as well. Ipe, for example, oils up beautifully, but at 3680 on the janka scale, it is almost FOUR times as hard as walnut. It is also naturally resistant to water and even resists burning.
I don't have any comparative data with synthetic materials, but I have a feeling that if a hydraulic press was pushing 3680lbs of pressure into a chunk of synthetic material, it wouldn't fare as well as Ipe. Likewise, if you took a blow torch to synthetics, I think they would melt pretty fast, while Ipe would merely singe, and start to char a little after a bit.
And that's not counting the long term effect of the sun's UV rays, which have a habit of making some synthetics brittle over time.
Take a chunk of wood and leave it a bucket for a year...that would be a good start.
A laminate would fare batter in a press, if were designed to do so, and so on.
A fibreglass would do better against a blow torch, as designed, as well.
Don't see too many wooden boats being built anymore?
And haven't seen a whole lot of synthetic stocks disintegrating from the sun, anymore than haven't seen wood stocks being eaten by bugs.
R.
A laminate would fare batter in a press, if were designed to do so, and so on.
A fibreglass would do better against a blow torch, as designed, as well.
Don't see too many wooden boats being built anymore?
And haven't seen a whole lot of synthetic stocks disintegrating from the sun, anymore than haven't seen wood stocks being eaten by bugs.
R.
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You don't see many wooden boats? But you are in Calgary, no?
I'm on georgian bay. Plenty of wooden boats here. Come see!
Just because I'm in Calgary, doesn't mean I'm from Calgary. I'm sure a fella can still plenty of wooden boats. A nod to quality construction, and plenty of maintenance. How many are being built today, in comparison to synthetic materials?
R.
R.
I was just teasing you a bit, but in all seriousness, yes, you're right, most boats today are made out of various synthetics, but in fairness, I think that's mostly due to economic concerns. Wooden boats are expensive in both materials, production, and maintenance. I'm just a cabinetmaker, but I have worked for plenty of wealthy cottagers, and quite a few had wooden boats, and it was intended to be a status symbol.
In comparison to wooden boats, however, wooden rifle stocks can still be made pretty economically.
