Need Some Enfield No4 Stock Help

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crackthump

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So I have picked up the Enfield addiction and need a little help when it comes to the wood types used for stocks. BLO is the best for the finish because tung oil takes a long time to cure and is tacky to the touch, but this is what I know:

British Enfields (BSA, Maltby, Faz) used walnut and beech wood,

Longbranch used walnut from southern Ontario

Savage used?

Could someone help me identify the wood type used in the Savage Enfields, and what they used as a finish that gives them the redish hugh?

Thanks, and please edit your ads in the EE if your items have sold.
 
Beech, Walnut, Birch are the main ones for all No 4 manufacturers. I've seen more birch then anything else, but that is just me.

There was even some trials conducted in the UK with laminated stock and bakelite ones and metal ones (I think aluminum), but none of them met with any success and were never produced beyond the few trials rifles. The bakelite warped, the metal was obviously need elsewhere and the laminate ones were dropped when more timber started arriving in the UK when the U boat threat was reduced. (If I screwed something up someone will correct me.)
 
Bakelite also breaks REALLY easily if you drop it on something hard!

I have an SMLE here with a composite Aluminum/wood stock. All I have is the Aluminum part, but it looks very like a toolroom sample, cast and then machined, coated first with light-yellow material to inhibit corrosion and then with a Brown paint of definitely-military type. The rifle is a 1918 NRF with Enfield FTR 1945 markings and a 1945 Enfield barrel. This is 2 years after Enfield stopped all work on the SMLE, even repairs. Rifle action has some sort of Black paint finish and a recycled Ross butt. Supposedly, this one fell off the truck in Canada in 1946. When I was at Enfield, they were of the opinion that half a dozen Ross butts were tried and a dozen sets of Aluminum/wood composite stocks, then the whole thing was dropped. I am SO tired of people telling me that the thing doesn't exist...... or that Bubba made it up out of old Budweiser cans.

They also tried a stamped sheet-steel stock at one time. It liked to get REAL hot in the open sun, REAL cold in Winter. Changing length was a real factor with it. Definitely a no-go, that one.

A FEW sets of LAMINATED Number 4 furniture appeared on the market in the early 1960s. The 1/8" laminated stocks were the Holy Grail of long-range Number 4 shooters when I was just starting out. I have seen 2 such sets but never could afford one.

Savage made some beautiful stocks out of American Black Walnut; some even had a reddish tinge to them: breathtaking.
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There was also a small run of maple stocks made, but they were a bit brittle and also very HEAVY!!! You could always find the maple stock by just lifting the rifles in the rack. The laminates were in both horizontal and vertical with a thin laminate as well as a thick. Canada also experimented with a plastic handguard, but few were made and not sure what the material was.
 
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