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LeeEnfieldNo.4_mk1

LeeEnfieldNo.4_mk1

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For the last few moths I have been wanting to build a maple stock for a Lee Enfield. Today, I wandered around town and thought about getting some of the tools and starting it. The thing is, I do not what tools I will need. My first thought was a chisel set, but what else would I need, or is recommended? I am going to start from a raw chunk of maple if I can find some.

Also, my last taste of wood working was in grade 9 wood shop, so I am a little rusty. could anyone give me a guide to get started?
 
The big issue is the need for carving out the bed. As someone obviously new to wood working this is not something you want to do with hand tools, especially with maple. It's tough as iron and will raise a serious sweat trying to do this with hand gouges. But if you do go for doing it by hand you'll want to use a lot of applications of felt pen ink to the action and then wiggle it into place in the bed. Then just a few light swipes with the gouge to remove the black marks and repeat. Keep going until the action fits down into the bed decently. The alternative is to get a bit more aggro, but not TOO much, and then Acriglass or epoxy putty fill and bed the action. And of course you'll need to cut the openings for the trigger and magazine group along the way. For this you'll want to drill a bunch of holes and then finish the mortise out with the chisels. Once roughed you could finish it with the right size rod or pipe with sandpaper but it'll be a slow process. Cutting the through holes for the magazine and trigger group would require similar attention to detail to get a nice fit.

Fourtunetly the outside is much easier. An assortment of spokeshaves, small hand planes and wood rasps followed by coarse NEW metal files and then a bucket load of various grades of sandpaper will work the outside shape down to what you want. But again some slick precision will be needed where the band goes around the stock just behind the trigger to let the stub fit just so.

To dive in with any more detail would require pretty much a book. Also along the way you'll need to learn to sharpen those chisels and the gouges so they are razor sharp or you'll be fighting the process all the way.

Still interested? :D I hate to discourage you on this but if you're that rusty on wood working this probably is not the place to start. You're going to need to ramp up on a lot of skills very quickly and you're bound to make mistakes along the way.

If you're still wanting to do this I'd suggest you start by making the stock using some basic spruce construction lumber to work on your skill set. Along the way you'll run into many troubles and find solutions and can try them on a $2 piece of easily worked softwood before trying them on a $40 piece of wood that acts like it's at least as hard as aluminium.

If you're still keen go find a long clear piece of construction spruce and have at it.
 
OK, so I will need a god set of chisels, a couple hand planes, some files, a good sharpening stone and a few cases of sandpaper?

I probably would have ended up doing one out of cheap wood to start off. It probably would have come to me after I see the price of the maple:eek:. Thanks though. I am still interested. I have a stock that I can use as a template. I know its gonna take a while, but I think it will be worth it. I was planning on staining it "Gibson Wine red", a color used by Gibson guitar company on some of their guitars. Here is the color I am gonna try and do.

RBLSTWRCHP-Finish-Shot.jpg


Its gonna take some time, effort, and a whole lot of swearing, but a No.4 with a stock this color will be sweet.

I would like to do the whole thing by hand, I think there is a smaller chance of error that way.
 
Lee: Seems like a lot of work just to get the "color" you want (not to discourage you from starting from scratch). Why not get a stock / use the one you have, soak the oil out of it (acetone), bleach out the colour that's there and re-finish it the color you want. BTW maple is not that expensive unless you want some fancy grained stuff. FWIW --- John303.
 
You can do a lot of spectacular things with minimal tools if you have the time and skills... That said there are some tools that make the job much faster and easier.

I made a birch laminate stock set with a decent assortment of power and hand tools: http://www.canadiangunnutz.com/forum/showthread.php?t=312384

There is a pic in that thread showing the three power sanders I primarily used to do the outside shaping of the stock set, those suckers were invaluable and made life a good bit easier.

I figure I used...

Router & Table: barrel channel rough in.
Dremmel & router base attachment: Almost everything relating to inleting and detail shaping (butt socket/barrel bands)
Assortment of chisels from 1/4" to 1 1/2": Cleaning up edges of inleting and detail carving. I also used a few small detail carving chisels now and then for tight corners and careful work.
Assortment of files and rasps: Again for fine detail adjustments and almost exclusively for the mid barrel band/sling swivel.
Power sanders (palm and belt): For minor and significant (belt sander w/60 grit) stock removal and shaping.
Band saw: Overall trimming and shaping the blanks.
Drill press: Drilling a few holes and spinning sanding drums for detail shaping.
Hand drill (power): Used to spin sanding drums ranging from 1/2" to 1 1/4" that were invaluable for shaping the knox form section of the inleting. I also used it to drill out the butt retaining bolt hole.
Propane torch: With the air inlet covered this gives a big sooty flame that I used to soot the action while I was working on the inleting.
Workmate bench: Used to clamp (along with numerous c-clamps) the blanks while gluing up and hold the blanks through almost all of the fabrication process.

Its not a huge list but it does add up. I think the main thing was coming up with ways to simplify the process or adapt tools to the task at hand. The stock bolt hole is a good example, I routed a 1/4" groove in both inner sides of the butt stock blank before lamination. I set drinking straws in one side of the groove when I glued it up to prevent the glue from filling the hole I was trying to form. The end result was a pilot hole perfectly centered and aligned for the stock bolt without having to drill it blind and potentially mess up my blank. Obviously that's not possible with a solid blank... but, you see what I'm getting at.

I'm partial to your color choice as well, but then I'm a little biased...

DSC_0181.jpg


Rock on Rock Soldier!
MB
 
I remember yours MB, it turned out pretty nice. The other reason I would like to do a stock is well, I am bored, and I liked restoring the other No.4. So I figured a few hours a night for a few months should keep me busy for a while, and save me on gas as I will not go for drives when I am bored.
 
Good thread. I want to try making a stock for a old cooey single shot or something. Start small, if that goes good I'll work my way up to bigger stuff.
 
Brownell's has everything you need to shape, carve, file, sand, finish and checker a stock. Lee Valley has most of what you need. ( A barrel gouge & checkering tools are somewhat specialized and not available everywhere)
 
You'll definetly be making up the methods for doing much of the work as you go along. As always measure 8 times and cut once... :D Whenever possible try to plan ahead so that any measurement errors tend to try to cancel each other rather than add. By thinking ahead you can often come up with clever tricks such as Milton Bradly described.

Either way you will want to leave the block whole for the barrel inletting portion if you're going to do the roughing work with a router and router table. And it helps to have some similar thickness scrap wood that can be fed through things like the router and measured to ensure your measuring was truly accurate and avoid surprises.

And if you've never done much with hand tools in terms of this type of work there's some good instructional videos on various furniture techniques for hand tools at the main Burnaby LIbrary at Metrotown. Granted it's not gun specific but the technique for chopping a mortise is the same regardless be it on furniture or fireams.
 
I forgot to mention that I like using Russian Birch Plywood from Home Depot for my experiments. It's cheap, looks alright, is a fairly soft wood and quick to shape while still being hard enough for the task at hand (so far so good). The down side is that it is very prone to tearing out if you try to cut against a lamination and the laminations tend to have different densitys so cutting across a series of laminations with freehand tools can be difficult. Chiseling and scraping tend to leave rough surfaces so sharp tools are a must.

For around $30 you can have enough wood for a few stocks and practice till you feel confident to move up to a nicer hardwood blank. I have a beautifully figured piece of 1"x8" maple I pulled out of the Home-Depot maple selection that will become the outer laminates of a glued up blank some day. That is another rout you can take to practice on a solid blank without the cost of a high grade blank. Laminate as many pieces of lumber together as needed to achieve your necessary thickness.

HTH
MB
 
Couple of points that are not covered , inlet your barrel channel
before you shape the out side shape of the stock.
It is much easer when everything is still square, expecially
if you used a router table.
You can rough out the channel with a table saw if carefull,
and finish it up with scapers, that you can make yourself from old file ,
if you have a grinder (if not , get one with white stones, not gray)
The main hand tools are spoke shaves and good rasps and a couple U
shaped wood gouges etc etc.
As stated above, maple would be the last wood I would use for my 1st
stock.
On maple , you will not get stain to take very good, use dies.
Marshall
 
Something nobody mentioned; you will need an extension drill for the butt stock bolt on a Lee. Can make one by silver soldering on an extension to a regular drill, if you have access to a torch and make up a V block out of angle bar.
For the forestock inletting I make (for myself) gooseneck chisels and scrapers --- a lot easier than straight chisels. Finally instead of a felt pen, black the barrel and action with soot from a coal oil lamp with the chimney removed. Shows the high spots. Most of the forestock should be free floating.

cheers mooncoon
 
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