Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Muzzleloaders => Topic started by: sleek on November 14, 2025, 03:50:11 pm
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Its 4 inches wide, 37 to the crook and 44 to the butt. I dont know if this can make a good stock or not?
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Unfortunately a lot of that will be sapwood. Don't know how that will work for a gun stock. I've never tried to build one so take that with a pinch of salt.
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Too small and too knotty.
For stock wood it takes a big log, you have to have room to avoid any obvious bark inclusions, knots, wind shakes and such when you lay out your pattern. A perfect log will have at least 3 stock blanks in a 3" thick, 24" wide slab, my first section of the log had only had two and one of them had a lot of flaws. All of the flaws were internal and didn't show until I slabbed off the log.
As you can see, there is no stock wood in the bad half of the log.
(https://i.imgur.com/oSwWzII.jpg)
Every cut had these types of bark inclusions, I could work around some, but most of the slabs ended up as firewood.
(https://i.imgur.com/SK4Xi3C.jpg)
You need a log about this size, about 20" in diameter at least; if you look at the first round, I trying to find sound wood, you can see just how much rot and flaws were in the 3 to 6 o'clock area. This didn't show from the outside.
After I cut out the two stock blanks I slabbed off the other half and found only a sea of flaws, I didn't get any good stock blanks out of the other half.
(https://i.imgur.com/QDF1HZV.jpg)