What’s the fix?

[elk killer]

This knot showed up after shaping the blank down, wasn’t visible
In the blank, great piece of Curley ash, thought about filling it
With black epoxy, so what’s the best fix?

[P.Bigham]

Leave it    More wood needs to be removed basically lower.  Expoyy looks terrible   My opinion

[Eric Krewson]

Soak as much superglue in it as you can and proceed like it wasn't there.

[Mr. Bubbles]

You could cut it out and make a splice.  Do you have scrap wood from the actual blank you could make it from?  That would let you at least align the grain direction.

[smylee grouch]

You could cut your panel back farther and get rid of it .

[Ky-Flinter]

You could cut your panel back farther and get rid of it .

2x

-Ron

[Greg Pennell]

Knots/bark inclusions happen in fancy wood, just a fact of life. I’ve been using superglue for fixing those kinds of flaws for 20 years...it works (as will reshaping the panel a bit). Between the two you’ll be in fine shape.

Beautiful wood, BTW.

Greg

[EC121]

The picture looks like the panel is higher relative to the barrel flat than it should be.  If you lower the wood and cut the panel back a bit, most of it will be gone.   What's left will be "personality".

[Mark Elliott]

My opinion is to leave it alone; it is part of the character of the wood.   

[Dennis Glazener]

I tend to agree with Mark but I do believe I would follow Eric's advice and fill it with super glue to stabilize it.
Dennis

[Goo]

Drill and plug! lots of originals have plugs it is historically correct.

[stubshaft]

I have to agree with Mark and Dennis, it is a "character" mark.  When I made self bows they created much more work but were also more interesting...

[rsells]

I agree with EC121.  Lowering the wood to half the width of the side flat and reshaping the panel will nearly take care of the issue.  I did a similar repair as well.  I did use some Acura glass to fill the cavity  and let it cure before I reshaped the wood in that area.  In my case, I was able to use the black stain and brown stain in the Acura glass kit to get the color very close to the color of the wood in that area.  The texture was slightly different than the natural wood, but I was happy with the repair.  I was lucky in my instance because the flaw got much smaller as I worked the wood down.  I showed the customer the before and after and he was happy with the finished rifle.  It has been in use for several years now with no issues.  Using fancy wood leaves us open to running into flaws that are not visible until we work the stock down.  I scrap a $400 piece of sugar maple  about 15  years ago because of a bad spot in the wrist that did not show up until I worked the blank down  to nearly the finished profile.  Bummer, but it was one of those times that I lost the battle.
                                                                                                    Roger Sells

[Marcruger]

Just my 2 cents worth.  I'd sure stain that area with AF or whatever before I started soaking superglue or any other glue into it.  My experience with wood has been that glue does not absorb stain. 

I also have not seen any Acraglas stained brown that I liked.  If you have to resort to that, I'd use black.  Once you take that area down it would just look like a spot of grain anomaly. 

God Bless,   Marc

[EC121]

I repaired a knot one time by making some sawdust and staining it a color similar to the color of the knot.  When it dried, I mixed it with enough epoxy to make a paste and filled the knot with the stained sawdust paste.  When the rifle was finished, it looked like part of the knot.

[P.W.Berkuta]

I repaired a knot one time by making some sawdust and staining it a color similar to the color of the knot.  When it dried, I mixed it with enough epoxy to make a paste and filled the knot with the stained sawdust paste.  When the rifle was finished, it looked like part of the knot.

I've done this same type of fix also using Accura Glass epoxy, sawdust & Accura Glass stain and it turned out VERY well. Use the runny Accura Glass . On one of those DYI wood working shows David J Marks did a knot repair and it was so good that the repair looked like there was no repair at all - amazing.