stock ?

[Luke]

hey everybody help all is well,have a chance to get my hands on some old cherry wood what size would i neeed to cut it ive cut some to short or the width wasntwhat i needed it to be ,and i dont want to mess this up so all you expert builders give me some lenghts and widths you have your blanks cut thanks luke.

[Acer Saccharum]

I like 2 3/4 to 3" thick for PA rifles.

For fowlers and guns without a cheekpiece, 2 1/2 is good.  2 1/4 is minimal.

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

I like a minimum of 64" in length, and longer if I'm using a barrel more than 46" long.

[whetrock]

Just in case you don't know...
Wood sometimes continues to stabilize (equalizing stress and moisture) after final sawing to length. The degree to which it does so depends on how thick was before it is cut to final shape, how the slab was sawed (what angle in relation to the growth rings), how dry it is (moisture content), and how dry the room is where it will be stored. Sometimes it doesn't move much, but other times it can bow or twist a bit, or crack, esp if the moisture content in the wood and the moisture content in the storage area are really different. Cracking can be a big problem, since it can ruin an otherwise great slab.

For that reason, a lot of guys like to dunk the last 3" or 4" of the ends of the newly sawed slabs (or stock blanks) into some hot (melted) wax as soon as the pieces are cut to length. That will slow down the release of moisture from the end grain, so as to help keep the end grain from cracking. (I've also used vaseline for this, but I wouldn't recommend it unless you knew you had plenty of margin. You'd hate to end up with an oily stain that wouldn't take colored stains.)

[Acer Saccharum]

Several coats of latex paint, oil paint, elmer's glue, or commercial endgrain sealer work good. If you use wax, be sure to melt it into the grain with a bernzomatic torch.

[Dennis Glazener]

Good advice by all, the only thing I would add is to give yourself extra length/width to allow you some leeway when laying out the stock blank/s. I find that invariably they will be a knot/check/split/inclusion or something that you will need to dodge and if the board is cut too close to size you are out of luck. One other concern is to remember the best blanks should NOT be musket grain i.e. where the grain runs parallel to the barrel through the wrist. One other thing that I screwed up on on the first boards I had sawn up was not to tell the sawyer to be sure not to allow the center of the tree to be in my blanks. In other words to cut the boards well to the right and left of the center. Especially with Walnut, you will have a hole running through the blank and that ruins it, ask me how I know
Dennis

[rich pierce]

You just got to line it up with the bore, Dennis!