Humidity and Summer Building

[marcusb]

I have a 3" chunk of maple cut in 94 I am going to attempt to make something with. I am located in Ohio which normally has high humidity and this spring it just wont stop raining. I am worried about gaps developing over the winter when wood shrinks. Am I being crazy? Has anyone dealt with this in the past? I am proably overreacting, but with the time involved I sure dont want to find out the hard way.

Also, wheres a guy find 45" and up barrels?

Thanks

[rich pierce]

The older the wood, the more cycles of swelling and shrinking it has been through, the less it seems to shrink or swell.  Sliding wooden patchboxes are one area where shrinkage and swelling can be troublesome.  Rarely do inlets open much.  I'd go ahead.  Seems likely original rifles were made year around in Ohio.

Rice has 46" barrels as part of their regular runs so they would be the quickest.

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

You could acquire a moisture meter and check the wood yourself.   The wood in my rafters is at 7.5%.  We don't have much in the way of humidity issues here.

[camerl2009]

I have a 3" chunk of maple cut in 94 I am going to attempt to make something with. I am located in Ohio which normally has high humidity and this spring it just wont stop raining. I am worried about gaps developing over the winter when wood shrinks. Am I being crazy? Has anyone dealt with this in the past? I am proably overreacting, but with the time involved I sure dont want to find out the hard way.

Also, wheres a guy find 45" and up barrels?

Thanks

being in southern ontario i know what you mean and living so close to the detroit river and sandwiched between 2 great lake's make's it worse

[B Shipman]

marcusbe, you're not over reacting in the slightest. Wood , no matter how well seasoned, takes and releases moisture- no matter how well it's seasoned. I remember a story where a guy bought a completely handmade rifle from Williamsburg, 20 grand, hung it over his fireplace over a dry air duct and the rifle forstock split from shrinkage overriding the pin slots. I've had patchboxes that won't close and inlays stand above the surface. Iv'e seen rifles 200 yrs. old rattle loose in the dry winter and be nice and tight in the humid summer.
I keep a humidifier in my shop in the summer . I don't know how the rifle will be ultimately handeled. And I rarely use any piece of wood I've not had for at least a year.

[Don Getz]

At one time I had a great Isaac Haines rifle built by Mike Gahagan.    Every time I would take it along to Friendship, which
is normally hot and humid, the stock would swell to the point of where the nose cap would extent about 1/16" beyond
the muzzle end of the barrel..........Don

[marcusb]

 Sounds like its a roll of the dice, I will proceed with my fingers crossed. Building a simple gun to hunt with and I can blame my inletting gaps on the weather!!  . Heading over to the Log Cab shop today to see what they have for barrels.

Thanks again

Marcus

[Jim Kibler]

Basement shops often seem to be worse in terms of summer humidity.  I run a humidifier in the winter and an air conditioner in the summer and this seems to keeps things reasonably stable. 

[Swampwalker]

we have horrible humidity here in tidewater Virginia.  I tend to rough out the stock, and then keep it inside where the humidity is controlled when I'm not working on it.  This has been adequate to avoid serious problems so far.

[KentSmith]

I too do most building in the fall and spring.  Virginia gets too humid.  Also I don't have AC in the shop and I sweat too much working over a gun in August. 

[flehto]

On a couple of stocks have had to relocate the bottom BP screw and no longer file in the lower butt molding shape into the BP....the mismatch looks horrible if the stock expands. ....Fred

[Daryl]

Bill's mention of the rifle drying out over the fireplace reminded me of one of Taylor's rifles, they little Kuntz he mailed from BC to Dixon's.

He lost points for wood around the inlays standing proud of the steel at the tang and lock plates- swelled due to the humidity there.  Here in BC, it's perfectly inlet.

 Moisture changes do effect our rifles for sure, especially when we travel.

[Osprey]

I wouldn't think in Ohio you'd have much problem.  Yeah, your humidity is higher in the summer, but even in the winter it's not like you're in Arizona, you still get plenty of rain and snow.  Just keep it away from the fireplace in the winter.

I know humidity seems to work much harder on me in the summer than it does on my guns!

[smallpatch]

I'm in AZ.  Humidity the last couple of weeks has been in the single digits.  Just wonder what happens to those tight inlets when the guns go to PA?

[Stophel]

We pretty much always have swamplike humidity here in W. Ky. I need to get a DEhumidifier....or two... to put in my shop.  Any iron implement I put out there will (literally) rust solid before the next day.

[Hawken62_flint]

I'm right next door in WV and have not experienced any variations in my rifles during the summer months.  As for barrels longer than 45", Ed Rayl (304-364-8269) runs them up to 48" at normal cost and then after 48", he charges $10 per inch.  I recently ordered a 50" barrel from him-wait time is 6 months or longer.

[Stophel]

Several years ago, I was building a gun, and we had had a very unusually nice period of weather with low (30-some odd percent) humidity.  I think it was May.  I had just put the barrel tenons on and got them pinned to the stock, which was maple with curl the whole length of the fore end.  I left the stock (unassembled) out in the shop when done.  The next day, our normal humidity returned (like 65%) and I couldn't get the barrel pins to line up again!  The fore end had stretched a total of about a sixteenth of an inch in one day!  So, I learned to slot the tenons....

Now, if the grain was straight and plain in the fore end, it wouldn't have done that, but with all the curl, you get lots and lots of cross grain stacked up, and that expands and contracts like crazy

[whitebear]

.  Any iron implement I put out there will (literally) rust solid before the next day.

You ought to have some easily browned barrels.

My thoughts on this subject, historically guns that were maid in one region usually stayed in that region, when they did go cross country with the settlers or mountain men the travel was so slow that the wood adapted to the change in humidity and wasn't a problem.  Again I say MY THOUGHTS, take them and a dollar and you can probably buy a cup of coffee.