Mountainman,
I know that break makes you heartsick, BUT believe it or not, that is an easier break to fix than many I’ve seen and much easier than the shattered Brown Bess Carbine Stock I mentioned earlier and fixed.
Whetrock made some excellent points about protecting the edges of the two cracked wood pieces. To make the repair as least noticeable as possible, every edge of original wood is valuable. Any missing edges or pieces can be filled in with Accraglas, but it makes the repair more noticeable. I very much agree the trigger guard should be dismounted and if necessary, bent back to as close as the original shape as possible. That way when it is screwed back in place after you glue the stock and before the Accraglas cures, it will help to align the stock and keep it in the correct position when you glue it and while the Accraglas or other epoxy cures. It also sort of acts like a clamp to keep both pieces aligned front to back and in the correct position.
Blaksmith is correct that a long threaded bolt and nut would be good to use, but if one does it that way, it can make alignment of the two stock pieces more difficult IF you don’t get the nut glued in exactly in line with the bolt and that could cause the broken stock piece to not be aligned correctly with the forward end of the stock when you tighten the long bolt in place. (I’ve seen such problems happen when repairing both modern and muzzleloading gun stocks.) A fix like this is better done on something like the butt stock of a modern shotgun or even a modern rifle, in my opinion.
Looking at the photo of your stock, I would use two 1/8” or 3/16” threaded brass rods, one short towards the top of the crack and a longer one towards the bottom. You have to drill the holes for them oversize so the rods will not cause alignment problems when the two pieces of the stock are glued together. You put Accraglass in the holes to fill up the extra material you cut out and Accraglas on the threads of the rods. You cut inverted cone shapes near the ends of both holes on both pieces of the stock and they will also be filled with Accraglas. What that does is make sort of an internal dovetail or think of something like the shape of an hourglass laying down along the length of the stock. This and the threaded brass rods actually make the repair stronger than the original wood.
When done this way, you DO have to lay a couple of maybe ½” or ¾” boards along each side of the stock when you clamp both pieces in a vise OR use a couple Irwin Soft Jawed clamps (one above and one below the crack) holding the boards against the stock pieces to keep them aligned, like the one showed in this link:
http://www.irwin.com/tools/clamps/one-handed-mini-bar-clamps Such a repair requires thinking and planning ahead before and when you do it, but it is not rocket science. If you don’t feel you can do it, then by all means approach someone who can.
Oh, I would advise against using atomized/powdered metal in the Accraglas as it would make such a repair VERY visible when done as the metal will stick out like a sore thumb like “tiny sparkles” in any place it is exposed and it is not needed for this repair for additional strength. I glass bedded my first M14 in 1973 and have glassed thousands of M14, M1, Remington M40A1, M1 Carbine, M1903 and A3 stocks and I’ve lost track of all the other modern and muzzleloading guns I’ve done over the years. My first year in the Marine Corps RTE Rifle Rebuild Section, I glass bedded over 150 rifles, for example. I do not mention this to brag, but I’m simply stating what we did as it was our normal job. Atomized/powdered metal is a good idea in other applications, but not in this one, in my opinion.
Gus
