Plastic Stocks for the Double Shotgun

A boat and a shotgun stock have more in common than you might think. Boats were made with fiberglass and epoxy for along time. Normally, working them is not a difficult project for the doit-yourselfer. In gunsmithing epoxy became an unsurpassed everyday material. In fact, we cannot make a step without it. Glass bedding stocks, metal finishes, and all kinds of repairs are just a few examples.

This article describes how to make an inexpensive stock using epoxy, fiberglass and simple technique borrowed from the boat-building tradition. While some plastic stocks are available on the market you won’t find any for the Browning Superposed and its descendants, not for side-by-sides and not for many other guns. Some over-and-unders, notably Beretta and the Browning Cin ergy, have a composite stock option, however, Cinergy stocks will not fit any other Browning and is still quite expensive to begin with.

My goal here is to discuss how we can take care of old guns used for practical hunting purposes when their owners are concerned with price rather than beauty or tradition. In many cases mechanisms on these guns remain functional despite pitting, partial rust or other small damages. When a wooden stock on such a gun needs to be replaced, the owner has limited alternatives. One alternative is to replace it with another wooden stock, which may be prohibitively expensive due to overall poor gun condition.

This is like putting new luxury leather seats into an old rusty car just be Some weights should be used to prevent them from floating in the tank. The other alternative is to discard the gun and buy anew one, which is also a pity, especially if you were hunting with that gun for years. In this article I suggest the third alternative, which can make the gun perfectly usable with practically no investment. Our principle here is to make a reliable and convenient replacement stock at low cost.

I will illustrate the step-bystep procedures with a real, practical case. Making the plastic stock On my bench is the old Browning Superposed, used for more than 40 years for duck and geese hunting on salt water. Salt water destroys everything made of wood and steel and

this Browning is no exception. All the metal surfaces are pitted. The wood has decayed due to salt water and mineral oils. It had cracked and broke several times already and was "fixed" with tape, but practically became unusable. Despite all that damage to the metal surfaces and stock the internal mechanism remains quite sound and can serve much longer. The bores, though not shiny anymore, are also good. Thanks to a great design this gun does not have anything loose.

After all these years of faithful service the owner has certain sentimental attachments to this gun. So, we need a stock! This owner is indifferent to what it is – just strong, practical and inexpensive. Facing this problem I asked myself, do I want to make anew walnut stock for this gun? I definitely did not. A good walnut stock takes along time to make and is an expensive part. A gun in this condition is not worth it.

Besides, it is already proven that the wooden stock is not practical in these particular hunting conditions. Then I asked, what is the cheapest way of making a strong stock resistant to salt water? After some time coming up with a complete procedure I felt it should be some kind of plastic. The easi The thickness of this layer is important around action inlet and grip. est plastic to deal with is epoxy.

It does not need any equipment and can be used with fiberglass tissue for building a strong shell around a properly shaped template-model. This is where the boats are coming into mind. They were built this way for years since epoxy came into play in the 1960s. Applying this idea to the gunstock means that we would build a hard epoxy-fiberglass shell The easiest fix, and possibly the only hope for this multi-barreled Drilling stock is the rebuild procedure described here. on the appropriate stock-template.

This shell by itself should be strong enough to perform as a stock, which means that template is not important after we are done. In general, the template can be made of any material and custom-fit to a shooter. In our case, however, the easiest is to make a template out of the old broken stock instead of making anew one. Obviously, whatever is left of

A one-inch extension was glued to the butt. the old stock has to be completely degreased, glued into one piece and reduced in size for making space for the new shell. The first step is degreasing parts of the old stock. My way of doing that is boiling them in detergent for quite awhile. Normally I put apiece of lead on the top of these parts to completely submerge them and avoid floating.

It is important to keep wooden parts at the bottom of the tank since during boiling the dark-brown grease from the old stock starts floating on the surface. I remove it with a paper towel. Af A straight stock would have been much easier to deal with! Plastic film is used to adjust the thickness of epoxy-fiberglass adjacent to barrels. ter boiling in detergent I boil parts in clear water to remove traces of detergent.

Such boiling makes the wood very porous, which is quite useful for my purposes since epoxy will flow into the pores and adhere to wood much stronger. After drying, all the pieces of the old stock should be glued together. The next step is removing enough wood from the surface to fill in with epoxy-fiberglass as you need on top. After preparing the stock this way we are coming close to applying epoxy. Epoxy is the most expensive material used in this project.

However, for our purposes, any quality, color and consistency will suffice. I have used all types of new and old epoxies in my shop, among them auto-body filler, inexpensive epoxy wood-filler, small amounts of epoxy with an unclear quality, paste and liquid epoxies, and so on. I also use powdered fiberglass or aluminum for reinforcing some internal places of the inlet. Do not forget about epoxy release (Continued on page 14)

around metal inserts. In case of the Browning Superposed there are two round metal inserts for the forend cross bolt. These have to be carefully positioned and cemented (bedded) in the forend. Obviously, this procedure depends on the construction of the particular gun. Fitting forends to barrels becomes much easier when using "kitchen stretch" (cling-film plastic wrap) around the barrels.

It is easy to use and serves as a convenient substitute for the epoxy release agent on the wide areas, such as between the barrel and forend. Shaping stock and forend, removing excess of epoxy and fiberglass does not present any problems. Fortunately, this material is easy to shape with files and power sanders. The only caveat is to remember that the gun should fit the shooter and this is a good time for adjusting length of pull and other dimensions of the stock.

In the case of the Superposed I had to add a 1-inch long wooden extension, which was simply glued to the butt. Some space should be left for the layer of epoxy-fiberglass. The epoxy-fiberglass thickness is critical only in the inlet and grip areas where most of breakages take place. The butt part of the stock does not need much cover. After complete stock shaping I started thinking about checkering. On one hand, checkering or some other roughness on the grip and forend is practical.

On other hand, checkering is too fancy and expensive for this kind of stock. I have decided to use a quite weird way of creating roughness on the stock – sand. Tape is used to frame the area where sand should be glued. This area then is covered with epoxy and sand just randomly thrown on top – the way you would put salt or pepper on a dish. Whatever sticks is left. After hardening, this area should be rubbed in order to get rid of the loose sand that is falling away or creating bumps.

I think this is a simplest way of creating pretty good roughness on the stock. My other alternative was to apply the Wrinkle Finish aerosol sold in hardware stores. I tried it but did not achieve as good roughness as I had with sand. The final step is covering the newly made stock with some kind of finish. My first and last choice is Dura Coat, www.duracoat-firearmfinishes.com. The application of this very useful finish was already discussed in American Gunsmith by Chick Blood.

This is an epoxybased paint, which means that it will strongly adhere to the epoxy of the stock and it is very strong by itself. This provides an additional way of covering all possible imperfections of the stock and sand-roughness with Dura Coat is easy to apply and is ready to touch in about an hour. In my case the owner has chosen a Desert Brown color. This article described a quick process of building inexpensive and practical stocks for the old Browning Superposed.

This process, however, can be applied to rebuilding stock for any shotgun or rifle. The main goal of this project was to achieve the rock bottom price for a fully functional stock with good fit to a shooter. This approach is useful in cases when the firearm has lost its appearance and value but still is functional as a hunting tool, especially in salt water. In these cases creation of anew wooden stock is too expensive and impractical.

The total cost of materials for the described job, including Dura Coat, epoxy and fiberglass did not exceed $50. Applied methods can be used for making fancy and nice looking stocks. Epoxy-fiberglass can be colored with brown-red dye and the surface finished with satin polyurethane and grip checkering. After such treatment, even a plastic stock will look like wood. However, that was not our goal in case of Browning Superposed. Functional or fancy, try building a stock like a boat for great results! AG

agent. The strength of the inlet and grip is the main concern for the strength of the whole stock. Internal parts of the inlet should be trimmed to free the space for epoxy-fiberglass and the action should be glass bedded after applying the release agent to it. Browning Superposed has a simple shape of the inlet, which is a seldom case for a double shotgun. Side-by-side guns normally have a much more complicated action inlet.

In such cases I first rebuild the whole internal structure before glass bedding the action. To illustrate that, I will step away the from Browning Superposed for a moment and use an example of a more a complicated inlet, such as a Drilling (gun with three barrels) stock with all inlet structure destroyed. For restoring lost parts of inlet after complete degreasing we first need to fill them with epoxy gel mixed with fiberglass or aluminum powder. Actually, in this case I have used Acraglas Gel from Brownells.

After hardening we need to glass bed the action. Both these stages may require several steps with repeated epoxy buildup. Putting layers of fiberglass and re inforcements on the template is easy, however, several rules should be kept in mind. First, start the job only after thorough application of the epoxy release agent on all parts of the action before inletting it. Second, fiberglass patches should be very well saturated with epoxy to avoid empty spaces underneath layers of fiberglass.

Third, the new stock skin is as good as your tailoring skills. The most convenient setup is having the template on a checkering cradle. The forend has a simple external shape but requires a good deal of care