Twisted stock blank

[Jeff Durnell]

Properly heated, wood becomes quite elastic. Sure there are limitations as to whether, or how far, a piece can be bent depending on wood thickness, grain and ring orientation, wood species, and more. Heat bent wood is used in industry for a lot of products and maintains its new shape indefinitely. It won't unbend itself, unless enough heat wasn't used, or used long enough to penetrate, or it wasn't held/clamped until cooled. There's usually a little bit of 'springback' when clamps are removed that needs accounted for, no biggie. If I can bend osage, one of the toughest woods around, from straight, into a full recurve bow in just a few inches, I'm confident many otherwise good quality maple gun stocks can be straightened enough to be made useful again.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to do it to a blank or two I have here in order to use them, and when I do I'll post it here.

[alacran]

I steam bent my target fintlock's stock to get  1/4 inch castoff. Here's a couple of pictures to show my setup. The stock is maple, almost to finish dimensions.

[jerrywh]

Dave. I don't take offense at any disagreement. When I was about 50 I found out I was wrong sometimes. It was shocking but good for me.  There are some woods and some grains that don't take to bending very well. I have had real good luck so far with maple and walnut but there are a lot of different kinds of walnut and I have been told that some of them don't take to bending very well.  So far neither myself now none of the gunmakers I know have had any problems. I know a lot of professional gunmakers because they have a yearly joint show with the engravers guild.
      I bought a Thompson center renegade stock from ebay to make a custom gun out of. It is supposed to be walnut. I gave it 2" more drop and 1/2" cast off. That was 3 or four years ago and it still has not moved. I won a long gong shoot with it at 275 yards off hand. My good friend Stave Nelson bends fine English shot guns often to fit his customers.  One time he accidentally bent one about 4". Not enough time to explain tha there but it is a humerus story.

[Dave A]

Jerry- great, one never knows theses days how people take things- actual discussions seem to be a thing of the past!

The TC Renegade stocks were walnut. 2" is an extreme bend-  imagine you must have had to modify the trigger guard on that one.

[Dave A]

Jeff- Wood industry really doesn't use heat to bend wood- it uses heat with steam or in combination with green or  soaked/wetted wood. Wetted sometimes means additives to increase plasticity. That's different than what the original poster was looking for help with. Taking a piece of wood and bending it in a form is much different than taking a very thick, already dry piece of maple and trying to remove twist with dry heat.

Maple is not a wood that likes to bend. Osage is indeed a tough wood. But how tough a piece of wood is has nothing to do with it's ability to bend- it's the woods physical makeup that determines that.  Osage's properties make it very well suited to bending. Oak and ash are also very tough woods that are readily bent. Pine is not a very tough wood, but really doesn't bend very well.