making a gun stock?

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bmxking

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hello every one.

i plan on making my dad a new shotgun stock for fathers day. i plan on useing wood with a cross grain. but i cant find any site that gives info on how to make it. our school now has a cnc and the teacher said i can build this. if anyone has any tips on what would to use, or what a good web site is or any advise could you please post them.

thanks

bmxking
 
Doing one in CNC would require you to CAD up the existing stock and then make any changes you want and then cut a test stock from junk wood. If you're good with CAD and provided your school's machine has the capacity in size and axes.

Doing one by hand for a one off may be easier if you're decent at woodworking. But you'll still need to start with the old one to measure sizes and angles to achieve the precise fit to the metal.

I recently did a new wood stock for a friend's paintball gun. In my case cutting the bedding was the part that required the most attention to sizes. For that I used a milling machine. The rest was done by hand and eye using various saws, spokeshaves, wood rasps (a LOT of wood rasping and coarse file work) and finally various grits of sandpaper. All in all that's really about all there is to it. No magical stuff at all.

You'll want to cut the profile from the wood stock and leave it squared until you've done any milling or drilling so that it's easier to hold square on the table or in any sort of vises. End drilling is best done using a drill press where the table can be tilted to vertical and then clamp the stock to the table and adjust to line up with the drill's quill axis. A long length of 1/2 inch rod in the chuck helps with lining this up.

I did a test stock in cheap building wood first to figure out all the steps. A good idea before you cut into a chunk of figured wood that may cost you upwards of $100 to $500 depending on what you can find and how deep the pocket book is for such a project. The actual wood cutting on a project of this sort isn't the challenge. Figuring out all the steps and planning them 4 or 5 ahead to ensure that you don't paint yourself into a corner is the challenge. One reason there's not a lot out there about such a project is because it is so tool, skill and design specific that there's really no way to present a single solution to the deal.

But regardless of which method you choose to go with the very first thing you need to do is remove the wooden parts from his shotgun and measure them and draw up a set of plans. In particular the area of the mounts for the shoulder stock and any pump handle or foregrip will be critical and need to be measured to a high degree of accuracy in the order of + or - .005 inch or .02 mm. Only by keeping these critical points close to this sort of accuracy will the new stock fit and support well. Some of it may not require that sort of accuracy but only by looking at the mounting points and figuring out how it works and which parts ARE important can you reach this sort of conclusion and determine which areas are critical and where such accuracy is not so critical.

For the 3D option coming up with some sort of way to digitize the existing shape will be a whole other issue. Again it all depends on what resources the school has available. Now that's a whole other topic and one you'll want to discuss with the CAD teacher.

Also when you're shopping for wood for this the "cross grain" you're talking about is actually called figure or flaming. There's a lot of other patterns such as bird's eye or burl. Then there's the twisted grain patterns that come from selecting wood that comes from down near the root ball or from around a branch crotch. Watch it with these very twisted grain woods though. Wood is not a stable media and warping and splitting can occur when cutting such highly figured wood even when it's supposed to be dry. Add in the cost of such woods and chances are you will look for something else even though it sure does look nice.

What sort of wood are you thinking of using for this?
 
:D Yes , a feathered crotch, long dark english swirl with fingers in the vertical. All nice , look up( richards micro fit ) they may have a blank with matching forend. Also look into checkering , very cool, and in demand:cool:
 
I don't know what CNC machines are available to you, but most school shops have a mill and lathe. What you will need is a machine that combines the functions of both so that a milling cutter can follow the contour both longtitudinally and radially as the work revolves slowly between centres. If you have a machine available that has the capability of working in that many axis I will be surprised.
 
bushwhacker said:
I don't know what CNC machines are available to you, but most school shops have a mill and lathe. What you will need is a machine that combines the functions of both so that a milling cutter can follow the contour both longtitudinally and radially as the work revolves slowly between centres. If you have a machine available that has the capability of working in that many axis I will be surprised.
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I dont see that a lathe would be required at all..... he should be able to carve most of it out of wood, starting by roughing out the stock shape with a band saw, then going at it with a rasp (or rotary tool with a rasp bit) to further refine the shape, and doing the finishing work with a sander bit on a rotary tool combined with old fasioned elbow grease and sand paper/emory tape
 
If the stock attaches to the shotgun with a through bolt he may require a lathe to drill the different diameters (usually two) on center. A lot of the exterior can be roughed out with an end mill in a series of steps. It takes a lot of planning and there will be some rasp work left to work out the steps. A recent thread in the gunsmithing forum on AR showed this very clearly and is worth looking for. The thread was within the last two months there and was well photographed. Search for it as it may help you a lot.
 
Here's the stock I did for my buddy's classic old paintball gun. Originally it had a rather "melted bar of soap" stock much like a Sheridan or Cooey. In fact it IS a Sheridan paintball gun so I'm sure the stocks are shared.

The wood for the new one is zebrawood and as you can see it's quite striking. The finish is more glossy than I would prefer but for paintball it's a plus since the gloss makes it a lot easier to wipe off any hits when cleaning up.

It's a pump action as I'm sure you can see A steel guide rod supports the pump rod and another smaller steel connecting rod joins the pump handle to the bolt at the rear of the top tube. The setup was modified to use a bigger CO2 bottle mounted in the stock with internal routing of a plastic HP macro line to an adapter where a regular 12gram cartridge would normally go.

Next on the "To Do" list is to buy and learn to use some checkering tools.

Here's a montage of the two sides in one shot..

Done.jpg
 
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Very impressive! Excellent work, especially on the pump action. I think some of the manufacturers could be taking some lessons from you on aesthetics!
 
CNC machines???? What the f is wrong with a bandsaw, course rasp,fine rasp spokeshave and plenty of sandpaper and lots or elbow grease. Then you will have something to be truelly proud of.....If you can work with wood . If not ,forget it. There is much to be said for Hand Made.Duker
 
Just one last post on this other than helping out the OP and I'll stop hogging the limelight. Thanks for the kudos. It was a fun project. I'm hoping to do a few more and sell them off to the paintball guys but I need to find time to make up some custom tooling to make the job more dependable and less reliant on a bit of good luck. A project for the near future is a paintball clone of a Winchester lever action but with the paintballs in the upper "barrel" and the actual barrel being in the lower "tube feed" position. Should be fun.

To bmxking, please don't think I'm trying to show off. Instead I hope you take this as inspiration of what CAN be done. But keep in mind that woodworking is a skill just like any other. And that sort of skill takes some practice. Do NOT be afraid to take this project on. However I heartily recomend doing a run through with cheap construction wood first to iron out all the bugs and kinks. Heck, do TWO run throughs if you honestly feel that you learned a lot but mostly learned that your first time through was a rough go of it. I remember doing my first serious wood carving. It was a project with two sides to be done evenly. I worked on the first side and thought I'd done well. Flipped it and did the second side. Turned it over and realized that I'd learned a lot between the first and second side and that now the first looked like playdo squished under a boot. So I worked on the first side to refine it to match the second side. But again I learned more and the second side now looked like poo compared to the refined first side. This went on back and forth for about 4 or 5 flips of the workpiece until I was happy with the carving. If you are new to wood working or have not done something of this sort before then by all means be critical of your own work and strive to do better. However do NOT give up. The first effort may look terrible but you've learned a lot already. DO it again with another 50 cents worth of junk wood and it'll look better. If you still think you didn't do great then do it a THIRD time, and a fourth if needed. Only when you look at your construction wood version and see that it's as good or better than the stock stock then break out the expensive wood and do it for the last and best time.

Also I don't need to mention that there's a LOT of satisfaction to working with wood. Try to enjoy the process and accept the personal challenge to do well at this and you'll have a new lifelong hobby.

Now get at 'er! :D
 
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I'm with Duker. Be easier by hand.

I've made a couple and my Dad has done so many over the years that he can have one roughed out and halfway inletted in 5 or 6 hours on a Sat. afternoon. Most of the time is in the finishing and you have to do that anyway with CNC.

Check out Ardent's build. A simple shotgun butt stock is within most peoples ability.
 
if you've seen what some woods that are ideal for gunstocks will do to some of the crap blades that are on school bandsaws then you might want to hold off somewhat. the ideal would be to use a copy lather which is what big name stock manufacturers do. otherwise get on that table saw and believe it or not its smartest to try and get things fitted while the piece is still fairly square.
 
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