forestock tip warping away from barrel help

[PKLeRay]

In the final stages of this build and the forestock tip warped away from the barrel with a 1/16th gap. Any tricks besides hot water and bending the other direction?

[Stophel]

Is the gap there with the barrel squeezed and clamped/pinned down where the front barrel tenon is?

[PKLeRay]

Yep all pins are in.

[PKLeRay]

Same difference when the pin is out and I clamp it.

[Mark Elliott]

You could either not worry about it, as wood naturally moves; or you could cover the gap with the nose piece.

[magyar]

I agree with Mark. Make a nose cap. I had a similar issue but it was due to poor inletting near the end of the barrel. It was a little more gap than I wanted. I used the opportunity to try my first poured pewter cap and it turned out awesome. Cannot now envision the rifle without it.

[gumboman]

I had the same problem on my current build but I found a way to correct it easily. In my case the stock with nose cap warped away from the barrel and there was a 1/16" gap.

My gun builder friend suggested steaming it. This is what I did.

Remove all barrel pins from stock.

Fill inlet in stock where underlug nearest the muzzle goes with something so the underlug will not enter that inlet. In my case I filled it with some cloth.

Place the barrel back into the stock. Now the front underlug cannot enter its inlet due to the cloth filling it. Barrel should be placed in the stock just as if you were going to pin in back in.

Since there is filler in the inlet for the underlug and the underlug will not go down, there will be a significant gap between bottom of the barrel and the stock.

In my case I then compressed the stock with a clamp so that it bent upwards toward the barrel until the bottom barrel flat touched the end of my nose cap.

I then wet the stock wood for a about 5 inches measured from the muzzle end back towards the breech area. I used a spray bottle with water. I sprayed this 3-4 times and let is sit for 1 minute or so.

Then I wrapped the wet part of the stock with a paper towel doubled over and sprayed that with water.

I heated up a heavy piece of steel that acted as an iron, then placed the hot iron over the wet paper towel and ironed the wood. This created steam. I made sure to go all around the stock. Both sides and bottom. Did not remove the nose cap.

I was careful not to get the iron too hot so the wood did not scorch.

When the iron cooled I was finished. Let the wood stay clamped for a couple of days to dry.

That did it. I now have no gap and has remained gap free over the last month. When I put in the pin for the front underlug the fit is fine with no gaps.

Now the barrel remains in the stock at all times unless I am doing some work that requires me to remove it.

Thanks Jim Parker for the steam tip.

[RAT]

I had this problem with my first build. I drilled straight holes for the pins. The friend I sold the rifle to filed the holes into slots and the problem went away.

I have posed this question here before without this context. The questions being... have you examined original guns, fastened with pins, with slots instead of straight holes in the lugs. The responses seem to indicate straight holes were traditional, with slots being common (but not universal) today. This may be something they just didn't worry about in the past.