Fitting A Semi-Inletted Stock

When your customer walks through the door with a broken stock on his Remington 870, 700, or 1100, finding a replacement that will bolt on is no problem. The same is true with most Winchesters, Savages, Rugers, Mausers, and Brownings. However, the customer that walks in with an old, long out of production gun is going to present you with some challenges.

Not too long ago, your only option would have been to buy a blank and spend more time and effort than the gun was worth, and I know of several old guns that were junked for nothing more than the lack of a stock. Today, there are several sources for semiinletted walnut stocks for these old guns. They won’t drop right in but, with some fitting, can get that old gun back out in the field.

Even if, in your mind, the gun is not worth the cost of the fitting of a replacement stock, that is really your customer’s decision and I suggest you let him make that call. A good example is an old American Gun Company hammer gun in 16 gauge that came in recently. This was one of the many "hardware store" guns made by the Crescent Arms Company and the original stock was not just broken but entirely gone. The gun had been owned by the customer’s grandfather and he wanted it repaired.

Now, I could have used the old line that it would cost more to repair than the gun was worth and I would have been right. I would also have been wrong as this gun’s value to its owner was not determined by the Blue Book or the collector market. This gun’s value was its sentimental value, having been used by the man’s grandfather, and he didn’t care that it was going to take $200-300 to restock a gun worth $100. The owner wanted it fixed and that is my job. I gave him the details and allowed him to decide.

Once he was willing to pay what I needed to restock the gun, the Blue Book no longer mattered. I went to Boyds’ Gunstocks (boydsgunstocks.com) and ordered their semi-inletted stock for the In this case there is a lot of wood to remove. American Gun/Crescent Double barrel hammer gun. This stock is designed to be fitted to a rather large number of guns manufactured by Crescent and will fit models with the older, flat mainspring locks as well as those with the later coil springs.

A quick check showed that it could be fitted to this large assortment of models by only having the inletting cuts made that were common to them all. That leaves plenty of wood to remove but the hard layout work and major cavities are already done. The first step in inletting the action to the stock is to determine where to start. In the case of a double barrel shotgun the obvious starting point is to inlet the receiver face and top tang.

As you can see from the pictures, the back of the receiver was not in contact with the wood except in one place at the bottom. I used a cabinet rasp to bring these into closer proximity and then proceeded to paint the back of the receiver and

Holes will be filled with dowel rod glued in place and redrilled. It is messy, nasty to work with and totally indispensable. the bottom of the tang with inletting black. After painting the stripped receiver back, the wood and receiver are carefully brought together and the receiver is tapped lightly with a mallet. Inletting black is a messy substance to work with and before the stock is ready to finish you will have learned to hate it. However, it does leave a clear black mark where the metal touches the wood.

This blackened area is then scraped from the wood and the process repeated until a flush fit between metal and wood is achieved. That sounds simple enough, but the process is slow and the parts come together only after hundreds of repetitions. It’s sort of like being beaten to death by butterflies. It’s pretty but takes forever. In the case of this stock, there were screw holes pre-drilled for the tang screws. They were the proper size and distance apart.

Unfortunately, when the inletting had them perfectly aligned with the tang the receiver was still far short of the wood. In a case like this you must simply ignore the holes and continue to inlet until the stock and the receiver fit flush. Then you can plug the original holes with dowel rod, mark the new locations and drill the stock. Once the back of the receiver and the top tang are in place you are past the hardest part of the job. The next step is to inlet the trigger plate.

Like all the parts, it must be disassembled, painted with inletting black and fit Here the lock inlet had to be cut on the bottom for the lock to align, leaving a gap on the top. This gap can be filled in with slivers of wood glued in place. one small step at a time. With this part in, the hole for the tang screw can be drilled. Mark the spot on the bottom of the stock where you want the screw to exit in the middle of the trigger plate and use a punch to mark the exact center.

Do the same on the top of the stock in the center of the hole in the top tang. Put a nail in a drill press vise and line the point of the drill up with the point of the nail. Make sure the vise is secured so it won’t move and recheck that when the drill is lowered, (Continued on page 14)

The center of the hole in the trigger guard will be located on the nail and the drill will start on the center of the hole in the upper tang. This insures that the hole will start and end exactly where it belongs. Once the sandpaper scuffs the tape finish sanding is done with the metal removed from the stock. the point of the bit contacts the point of the nail. Place the stock with the punch mark made on the bottom of the stock in the center of the trigger plate hole on the point of the nail.

Drill the hole, lining the drill bit up with the punch mark made in the center of the top tang hole. This is atrick taught to me by an old gunsmith to get the hole to come out exactly where you want it. If you are fitting a hammerless gun without side plates, all that is left to do is reassemble the action one part at a time and mark and inlet the inside of the stock to accept that part. Once the action is fitted together do the same with the triggers and you should be ready to sand, stain, and finish.

Should you be working on a sidelock or hammer gun, as is the case here, the locks have to be completely stripped. They are inletted using the same method of painting the bottom of the lock plate with inletting black and putting it in place, scraping away the black marks left behind and putting it back in place. This is usually where you come to the conclusion that the stock is ruined.

If the precut areas of the stock are too small it’s not a problem, but if things don’t line up or the cut is too big the voids have to be filled with thin walnut pieces glued in place. Using a stock blank avoids this problem but the trade off is that there is much more fitting to be done. This is not the easiest job in the shop and it takes a lot of time and patience, a big reason why few people are willing to pay what the job is worth and many gunsmiths won’t take it on.

If you area hobbyist, this is a valuable skill to learn. As a working gunsmith you have to decide how much you want to please your customer. My advice is to estimate the job high. This weeds out the customer that isn’t willing to pay you for the time invested. Besides, nobody ever complains if the job comes in under estimate. AG