Improving Beech Stocks

[yulzari]

Beech is a sound, cheap and stable wood with which to make a rifle stock but it is not beautiful. Staining can make it dark beech or redder beech and so forth but it still is, well, beech.

Is the a way of making the beech wood look better?

Before anyone suggests it, spalted beech is desirable and hence not cheap. Also can be weaker.

[smart dog]

Hi,
Good hard European beech can be stained very dark, which can look pretty good but without any decorative figure.  Many military guns stocked in beech were stained almost black.  Some were also painted.  That black color can be appealing on simple unadorned guns.  I am wary of American beech.  I just turned some for tool handles and it sanded so fast that I could almost turn the whole handle to dust in 15-20 minutes.

dave

[Mike Brooks]

Beech is a sound, cheap and stable wood with which to make a rifle stock but it is not beautiful. Staining can make it dark beech or redder beech and so forth but it still is, well, beech.

Is the a way of making the beech wood look better?

Before anyone suggests it, spalted beech is desirable and hence not cheap. Also can be weaker.

Can you find beech big enough for gunstocks?  I'm having difficulty locating some. I find the plainness  a good thing

[yulzari]

I live in France so European beech is always available. I can ebonise any wood to dead black chemically but I was hoping for some cunning plan to get some more classic figure into beech which I know is not there naturally. I am not a great fan of the plain or speckled look of natural beech.

[JLBSparks]

The founder of another forum just completed a Traditions Hawken kit. He gave the stock four coats of Birchwood-Casey walnut and two coats of Birchwood-Casey Rusty Walnut. Finished with several coats of Tru-Oil. It looks amazing!! Turned out MUCH better than I would have expected.

    -Joe

[smart dog]

I live in France so European beech is always available. I can ebonise any wood to dead black chemically but I was hoping for some cunning plan to get some more classic figure into beech which I know is not there naturally. I am not a great fan of the plain or speckled look of natural beech.

Hi,
Then don't use it.  I am not aware of any cunning plan to make beech look better.  My advice, if you require a better looking wood, use a better looking wood.  I am sure that if European makers knew how to embellish beech, they would have done so.  They couldn't so the wood was restricted to cheap military arms.  Even the wood that was ebonized by great European makers to make stunning guns was fruitwood of some sort, not beech.

dave

[Pennsylvania Dutchman]

Could it be false striped like some of the Lehman rifles?
Mark

[Dmcmullen]

Yes they can be faux striped.    I am in the middle of doing just that on an old CVA Kentucky.     I think those where beech wood stocks.      I have not yet put on the final finish but I think it looks good so far.
Dave

[Monty59]

here in Germany you see  most air guns stocks of beech but it is not a normal wood for stocks in europe I never seen a antique german hunting gun with a beech stocks also the most WWI & WWII Mauser
K98 there have a walnut stock end of the war there made some stocks in laminated wood. Why, surely you will find some cheaper guns with beech but the look of it is not you will have on a gun !

Monty

[WadePatton]

Beech is a sound, cheap and stable wood ...

Can you find beech big enough for gunstocks?  I'm having difficulty locating some. I find the plainness  a good thing

The timber grows all around here, plenty big.  Don't recall if we cut/sold any.  Some timber, like Buckeye were on the no-cut/no-buy list, no matter how big and straight.
 

[TMerkley]

Well.... Let's try this again, I was typing and it disappeared.....

When I was young and dumb, I wanted to darken the beech stock on my CVA Frontier Carbine.  When we built it, we used Birchwood Casey Walnut stain. It turned out orange. (1990) So about ten years later, I wanted to darken it  a little.  So, I sanded it down and placed the stock in a 5 gallon bucket of used motor oil.  After the lecture of "DON'T EVER USE MOTOR OIL ON A GUN STOCK!!!" I wiped the stock down with "Lighter Fluid" (Naptha) and acetone.  I again put the "Birchwood Casey" Walnut stain (orange) but it did turn out darker  on the softer grain.  The oil was absorbed into the end grain and up through the grain which allowed for a high lighted grain.  It turned out very pretty and I still use it.  It doesn't have any issues when it rains since it is practically weather proof at this point.   

[Daryl]

Yes they can be faux striped.    I am in the middle of doing just that on an old CVA Kentucky.     I think those where beech wood stocks.      I have not yet put on the final finish but I think it looks good so far.
Dave

Dave- that looks amazing and is what this thread-master,  yulzari, was asking about.

[bgf]

Yes they can be faux striped.    I am in the middle of doing just that on an old CVA Kentucky.     I think those where beech wood stocks.      I have not yet put on the final finish but I think it looks good so far.
Dave

I did the same to mine several years ago, but yours is much nicer!

I didn't mind the beech so much as the fore end and butt didn't match, which looked really funny when I patched the two together, so I striped, stained and then covered with tinted finish.

Ky_Flinter did one with matching wood and left it two piece, but he did a great job on the finish and it looks really nice.

[bob in the woods]

Depending on what you want to build with beech, you could also ink on some vines/leaves etc like some of the trade guns. I'm going to try that myself one day.

[Dmcmullen]

Thanks for the good compliments.    Yes these beech stocks can be prettied up if your willing to try.     I found it not to difficult once I started down the road to no return.   This rifle belongs to a friend of mine.    I got tired of hearing him complain about it not being in shooting shape, so I agreed to rebuild it for him.   I wanted to try my hand at it so he agreed to let me play with it.     This is my first attempt at such things by the way and I think I am hooked!!!
So I glued the front and back stocks together to remove that ugly brass spacer, placed her on a diet and thinned her down ALOT  and tried this finish.     By the way I got this idea from reading some of these posts from this site on faux striping.    The recipe was and is "Laurel Mountain Forge nut brown dye" applied as a base color to the untreated wood stock.    Then with a brush I applied "Fiebings medium brown leather dye" for the stripes.     I may still go in with some Fiebings dark brown to add more depth to "some" of the striping before I put a final oil finish on it.        For me the AHAA! moment was looking at the stripes that were not well thought out and just sort of thrown on there.     If you notice and look at maple, the stripes are usually not regular in width or spacing so the more irregular look seems to set well with me.
Here are 3 more of this stock in current stage.
thanks,
Dave

[WadePatton]

I don't think I've seen faux striping done any better.  Carry on!

[Daryl]

I don't think I've seen faux striping done any better.  Carry on!

With oil on it & if it then looks like we think it might, the story of how, needs to be told.

[WadePatton]

I don't think I've seen faux striping done any better.  Carry on!

With oil on it & if it then looks like we thing it might, the story of how, needs to be told.

Help me out here D, are you implying that finishing oils will muddy it up? 

[Marcruger]

Gracious Dave, that looks like a pretty piece of maple well stained with Aqua Fortis.  I look forward to seeing the end result.  Please post it for us when done.  Best wishes,   Marc

[Daryl]

I don't think I've seen faux striping done any better.  Carry on!

With oil on it & if it then looks like we thing it might, the story of how, needs to be told.

Help me out here D, are you implying that finishing oils will muddy it up?

-
Maybe -  that was my thought - there might not be a big-enough difference between the dark and light - won't know until it's finished or got some oil on it.  Looking forward to seeing the end result.
Thus far, it looks like a nice maple stock that has been stained.  Sure beats Sam's string-burnt stock.

[yulzari]

The faux striping looks promising.

[Only Round]

Here's a Bedford rifle I built with beech.  for staining I used the "Mike Brooks" approach.  2 coats of pumpkin orange followed by one coat of dark brown and then spray paint the entire stock flat black.  Rub back the paint with fine steel wool. The paint not only gave the stock a darker appearance but also highlighted some of the grain- an unexpected plus.

[Dphariss]

Beech is a sound, cheap and stable wood with which to make a rifle stock but it is not beautiful. Staining can make it dark beech or redder beech and so forth but it still is, well, beech.

Is the a way of making the beech wood look better?

Before anyone suggests it, spalted beech is desirable and hence not cheap. Also can be weaker.

If you want to use Beech its up to you. If lots of people used the stuff it would be easier for me to get curly sugar maple.

Dan

[WaterFowl]

With a finish on it it will look good from a distance..
Beech is beech Love it or hate it its still beech.
For faux striping I vote thin dark narrow lines close together...
Great project..its all fun!
please post finished pictures...