SwampTrooper
AH member
Part 1-
In every hobby, among all groups, there are those with experience and good fortune that have earned the right to call things easy. They give their knowing smirks, cock their eyebrows and let out that “oh shucks” chuckle to voice their amusement, slight disapproval, and above all, to assert their station of “been there and done that much better than you are”. I have no doubt that some of you may be among us and I also have no doubt that in making a custom rifle, the task of placing an ebony tip on the end of a piece of walnut is as simple as making a grilled cheese sandwich. The fact remains, that is not the case with me and I ask you to be kind. Everyone has to start somewhere, and here I am. As both a sort of cathartic exercise, and just because I love sharing my progress with anyone who is remotely interested in hunting rifles, I have decided to chronicle the project here. About six months ago, I purchased an old push feed Winchester model 770 for almost nothing. The bores is perfect, as is the crown. The rest of the gun is ugly as hell. I decided to transform the gun into a plains game rifle with the aesthetics and features that I would enjoy and document the process here, beginning with installing an ebony tip. I write in a fairly literary style, so I hope you enjoy the journey.
Step 1- What the heck is that black thing on the end of gun stocks and why is it there?
The ebony tip on a rifle stock has always caught my eye since I was a kid. It’s a bold choice when it comes to aesthetics, isn’t it? A jarring interruption from the flowing grain of walnut to a vertical or at times, 45 degree line. The first time I dealt with ebony was a rifle my grandfather left his son when he died quite young. In the late 1960s kit guns were popular. He died long before he could explain his decision making on the gun, but it was decidedly modern for the time. He took a left handed Savage .308 action and dropped into a curly maple stock blank and carved out some strange shape right out of the jet age. .308 in the 1960s? That was cutting edge. It had almost a triangular forend with a sharp ergonomic pistol grip and the highest Monte Carlo stock I had ever seen. He also tuned the trigger to an insane 1.5 lbs (we were afraid of how light it was). It lacked checkering as he was just a hobbiest but it distinctly had a wide and tubular black piece of wood on the front, cut wide and angular like the nose of a WWII fight plane. What is that for? Moreover, why don’t we see it anymore? These were the thoughts I shared with my dad some twenty years ago (to date myself) when I was about ten years old and turning to guns the way some other boys turn to trucks or dinosaurs. “We’ll that’s usually ebony” my dad said. “But not always, sometimes it’s rosewood or something else that’s pretty.” Pretty? That’s an interesting idea for a gun. But he was right, guns are pretty sometimes. I wonder why? Already at ten I have realized that objects can have beauty the way that people sometimes do. Ultimately, he explained, the ebony tip is there to protect the end-grain of the wooden stock. Dark woods have very dense fibers, so it provides a sort of protection over the exposed end. Okay, that makes sense. But why do you essentially never see it anymore on factory made rifles? Simple, time and money. It’s cheaper not to do it, and at the end of the day, the likelihood that the average person has an issue with the end-grain of their stock is essentially zero. But the fact remains, it’s pretty. And modern production rifles, if they are even stocked in wood, are uglier for want of ebony. As the legend Larry Potterfield says, it adds a touch of class. Well if a billionaire calls something classy, he’s probably right. But wait! Rigby, of universal safari fame never puts ebony on their rifles! Instead they have that signature stumpy forend, cut a wee short for American tastes but enough to create the signature rigby lines of a classic safari or deer stalking rifle. What about that? Well I guess some people like to be different, and at the end of the day it is really a matter of taste. My project is going to have the ebony tip on it. Time to find some ebony.
Step 2- Ebony is actually pretty hard to find.
It’s called African Blackwood and it’s harder than your concrete driveway. Ebony on the other hand is about 30 percent softer on the wood hardness scale (whatever that’s called). Naturally, woodworkers prefer to work with real ebony because it’s not the hardest wood in the world but pretty darn hard. For an ebony tip you need a decent size block. Something around a two inch by two inch cube. Doesn’t exist. Long ago brownells sold them almost in those exact dimensions, but like every project of my life, the convenient thing that is perfect for the job went out of stock about ten years ago and no one has ever bothered to do another production run. But what you can get is African Blackwood. It’s a slow growing tree with minimal sapwood, dark grain, but still a swirling flow that is pleasant to the eye. Apparently, there is wet and dry wood, and for any woodworking, you need dry wood. It can take up to five years for a piece of wood to dry out, so finding it in stock is rare. But I got the hookup and it came in the mail covered in wax in a 4 inches by two inches block. Time to saw it in half for one side to try, and the other side in case of disaster.
Step 3- The Plan
Should be pretty easy right? I’ll cut off the front end of my stock at a certain length, about two inches because it’s a big long, and glue on a block of ebony, pinned in place with wooden dowels. Then I’ll a grinder to bring the block into the lines of the stock. Then after a sort of tubular shape is made, I’ll use the grinder to round off the front. After than, I’ll use sandpaper by hand to round out the cut marks and polish it up to a fine finish. Then I’ll refinish the stock and presto the ebony tip should be affixed in a pleasing way. Sounds easy enough.
Step 3- Sawing off the tip of the XX grade Turkish walnut stock.
A $400 piece of wood should give anyone pause when you lay the sucker down on the deck of a table saw. The replacement stock is made by Boyd’s and I definitely took a risk in getting Model 70 replacement stock from them. Some have had spotty results, especially in their more “premium” grades. However, after looking at a couple YouTube videos, it was clear the grade was not the grade 2 wood you would see at Rigby or Mauser. It was still better than the pine firewood that came with my original stock. The wood is so porous, you can use it as a sink sponge, and the grain is wide open. It melts away under sand paper and the checker has that abomination of pressed checkering that I am certain looked horrendous even in its first condition. Like grandpa, I’d have to checker this thing but that’s a misadventure for another day. I take my calipers and measure two inches from the front. This stock is so oversized, it feels like I’m holding up a boat. After this ebony business there needs to be a lot of shaping if I’m going to make this thing look good.
Be aware if you purchase from Boyd’s its barely a “custom” replacement stock. My rifle will have a safari style barrel band, so I called customer service and asked them to delete the foreword swivel screw hole. “We don’t do that”, the lady said. “But my project doesn’t need it and you make the stock from scratch. When it comes the time to add that screw, can you just skip this step?” Mind you, I am paying hundreds of dollars for this stock. I know in the gun world that’s not a lot of money relatively, but still. “Yeah no we can’t.” “I see. So you make the stocks then out of CNC and it’s already programmed into the computer to cut the whole?” “Yeah, exactly” “And it’s not worth your time to edit the code for me?” “Yeah, exactly” “Fine, I’ll probably just cut it off anyway.” And that’s exactly what I did.
After tapering the front end of the Boyd’s to a pleasant round and thin shape that even Rigby would be proud of, it was time to make the cut. Using the sliding jig on the saw, I had to make sure the stock was sitting perfectly straight in the cradle, or else the front cut would be at an angle. I wanted a perfect 90 degree cut to the foreword rails of the gun. The problem was that there was no real way to hold the stock in place. If I put pressure on the stock, it would slide to a position where it was tilted toward me, or away from me, throwing the margin of error wildly off. No real solution to this without making a custom saw cradle, and that I do not have the time or experience to do. I’ll just hold it in position as best I can and make the cut.
….
It’s sort of straight? I’ll try it up with my belt sander, that’s do it. Except when I true it up in the grinder, millimeters of stock are taken off. How short do I want this to be? I made sure to give my self some wiggle room but cutting the tip off higher than I actually wanted, but now we are cutting it close. Oh well, no going back now. Time to do some drilling.
In every hobby, among all groups, there are those with experience and good fortune that have earned the right to call things easy. They give their knowing smirks, cock their eyebrows and let out that “oh shucks” chuckle to voice their amusement, slight disapproval, and above all, to assert their station of “been there and done that much better than you are”. I have no doubt that some of you may be among us and I also have no doubt that in making a custom rifle, the task of placing an ebony tip on the end of a piece of walnut is as simple as making a grilled cheese sandwich. The fact remains, that is not the case with me and I ask you to be kind. Everyone has to start somewhere, and here I am. As both a sort of cathartic exercise, and just because I love sharing my progress with anyone who is remotely interested in hunting rifles, I have decided to chronicle the project here. About six months ago, I purchased an old push feed Winchester model 770 for almost nothing. The bores is perfect, as is the crown. The rest of the gun is ugly as hell. I decided to transform the gun into a plains game rifle with the aesthetics and features that I would enjoy and document the process here, beginning with installing an ebony tip. I write in a fairly literary style, so I hope you enjoy the journey.
Step 1- What the heck is that black thing on the end of gun stocks and why is it there?
The ebony tip on a rifle stock has always caught my eye since I was a kid. It’s a bold choice when it comes to aesthetics, isn’t it? A jarring interruption from the flowing grain of walnut to a vertical or at times, 45 degree line. The first time I dealt with ebony was a rifle my grandfather left his son when he died quite young. In the late 1960s kit guns were popular. He died long before he could explain his decision making on the gun, but it was decidedly modern for the time. He took a left handed Savage .308 action and dropped into a curly maple stock blank and carved out some strange shape right out of the jet age. .308 in the 1960s? That was cutting edge. It had almost a triangular forend with a sharp ergonomic pistol grip and the highest Monte Carlo stock I had ever seen. He also tuned the trigger to an insane 1.5 lbs (we were afraid of how light it was). It lacked checkering as he was just a hobbiest but it distinctly had a wide and tubular black piece of wood on the front, cut wide and angular like the nose of a WWII fight plane. What is that for? Moreover, why don’t we see it anymore? These were the thoughts I shared with my dad some twenty years ago (to date myself) when I was about ten years old and turning to guns the way some other boys turn to trucks or dinosaurs. “We’ll that’s usually ebony” my dad said. “But not always, sometimes it’s rosewood or something else that’s pretty.” Pretty? That’s an interesting idea for a gun. But he was right, guns are pretty sometimes. I wonder why? Already at ten I have realized that objects can have beauty the way that people sometimes do. Ultimately, he explained, the ebony tip is there to protect the end-grain of the wooden stock. Dark woods have very dense fibers, so it provides a sort of protection over the exposed end. Okay, that makes sense. But why do you essentially never see it anymore on factory made rifles? Simple, time and money. It’s cheaper not to do it, and at the end of the day, the likelihood that the average person has an issue with the end-grain of their stock is essentially zero. But the fact remains, it’s pretty. And modern production rifles, if they are even stocked in wood, are uglier for want of ebony. As the legend Larry Potterfield says, it adds a touch of class. Well if a billionaire calls something classy, he’s probably right. But wait! Rigby, of universal safari fame never puts ebony on their rifles! Instead they have that signature stumpy forend, cut a wee short for American tastes but enough to create the signature rigby lines of a classic safari or deer stalking rifle. What about that? Well I guess some people like to be different, and at the end of the day it is really a matter of taste. My project is going to have the ebony tip on it. Time to find some ebony.
Step 2- Ebony is actually pretty hard to find.
It’s called African Blackwood and it’s harder than your concrete driveway. Ebony on the other hand is about 30 percent softer on the wood hardness scale (whatever that’s called). Naturally, woodworkers prefer to work with real ebony because it’s not the hardest wood in the world but pretty darn hard. For an ebony tip you need a decent size block. Something around a two inch by two inch cube. Doesn’t exist. Long ago brownells sold them almost in those exact dimensions, but like every project of my life, the convenient thing that is perfect for the job went out of stock about ten years ago and no one has ever bothered to do another production run. But what you can get is African Blackwood. It’s a slow growing tree with minimal sapwood, dark grain, but still a swirling flow that is pleasant to the eye. Apparently, there is wet and dry wood, and for any woodworking, you need dry wood. It can take up to five years for a piece of wood to dry out, so finding it in stock is rare. But I got the hookup and it came in the mail covered in wax in a 4 inches by two inches block. Time to saw it in half for one side to try, and the other side in case of disaster.
Step 3- The Plan
Should be pretty easy right? I’ll cut off the front end of my stock at a certain length, about two inches because it’s a big long, and glue on a block of ebony, pinned in place with wooden dowels. Then I’ll a grinder to bring the block into the lines of the stock. Then after a sort of tubular shape is made, I’ll use the grinder to round off the front. After than, I’ll use sandpaper by hand to round out the cut marks and polish it up to a fine finish. Then I’ll refinish the stock and presto the ebony tip should be affixed in a pleasing way. Sounds easy enough.
Step 3- Sawing off the tip of the XX grade Turkish walnut stock.
A $400 piece of wood should give anyone pause when you lay the sucker down on the deck of a table saw. The replacement stock is made by Boyd’s and I definitely took a risk in getting Model 70 replacement stock from them. Some have had spotty results, especially in their more “premium” grades. However, after looking at a couple YouTube videos, it was clear the grade was not the grade 2 wood you would see at Rigby or Mauser. It was still better than the pine firewood that came with my original stock. The wood is so porous, you can use it as a sink sponge, and the grain is wide open. It melts away under sand paper and the checker has that abomination of pressed checkering that I am certain looked horrendous even in its first condition. Like grandpa, I’d have to checker this thing but that’s a misadventure for another day. I take my calipers and measure two inches from the front. This stock is so oversized, it feels like I’m holding up a boat. After this ebony business there needs to be a lot of shaping if I’m going to make this thing look good.
Be aware if you purchase from Boyd’s its barely a “custom” replacement stock. My rifle will have a safari style barrel band, so I called customer service and asked them to delete the foreword swivel screw hole. “We don’t do that”, the lady said. “But my project doesn’t need it and you make the stock from scratch. When it comes the time to add that screw, can you just skip this step?” Mind you, I am paying hundreds of dollars for this stock. I know in the gun world that’s not a lot of money relatively, but still. “Yeah no we can’t.” “I see. So you make the stocks then out of CNC and it’s already programmed into the computer to cut the whole?” “Yeah, exactly” “And it’s not worth your time to edit the code for me?” “Yeah, exactly” “Fine, I’ll probably just cut it off anyway.” And that’s exactly what I did.
After tapering the front end of the Boyd’s to a pleasant round and thin shape that even Rigby would be proud of, it was time to make the cut. Using the sliding jig on the saw, I had to make sure the stock was sitting perfectly straight in the cradle, or else the front cut would be at an angle. I wanted a perfect 90 degree cut to the foreword rails of the gun. The problem was that there was no real way to hold the stock in place. If I put pressure on the stock, it would slide to a position where it was tilted toward me, or away from me, throwing the margin of error wildly off. No real solution to this without making a custom saw cradle, and that I do not have the time or experience to do. I’ll just hold it in position as best I can and make the cut.
….
It’s sort of straight? I’ll try it up with my belt sander, that’s do it. Except when I true it up in the grinder, millimeters of stock are taken off. How short do I want this to be? I made sure to give my self some wiggle room but cutting the tip off higher than I actually wanted, but now we are cutting it close. Oh well, no going back now. Time to do some drilling.
