stock wood

[Daniel]

Next year I am with a friends help going to do a Woodbury style rifle.  Charles Burton is going to make me a 46" A wt. .38 cal.
barrel. I would like to build it out of something other than maple or walnut. I saw a rifle made from hackberry and liked that.
Is there anyone who cuts stocks from different woods for this?  I have searched but came up with the usual.

[smylee grouch]

I would consider ash or cherry.

[rich pierce]

Sometimes suppliers have unusual stock blanks. I've seen chestnut, sycamore, and a couple others. If you try to find lumber thick enough and sized right for stocks you'll do a lot of looking and probably paying too. There are good reasons why maple, walnut, and cherry are the most common stock woods. They are relatively common, grow large enough to be worthwhile to saw into gunstock blanks, have good dimensional stability, adequate hardness and strength and dent resistance, and are workable and attractive. 

[Gene Carrell]

Dick Miller has used hackberry in the past and frequently has non-traditional woods on his porch at the Friendship shoots. He lives in Michigan and you may be able to get hold of him through the NMLRA.

[Hillbilly Delux]

You can also try Tip Curtis, he has quite a supply of blanks however, he is on vacation till mid Jan.

[Daniel]

I would love cherry or ash. Forgot about them. Curly cherry would be real nice.

Thanks,
Daniel

[David Rase]

Harrison Gunstocks has had persimmon for sale in the past.  It falls into the unusual traditional wood category.
David
David

[Sweeney]

We just dropped a curly ash and some promising cherry but they will not be dried until late March - early April. If you can wait til then....

[Don Stith]

Wayne Dunlap at Dunlap Woodcrafts carries a variety of woods as well as the traditional maples
 The phone number is  703 631 5147

[smart dog]

Hi Daniel,
I also love to experiment with different woods but I've yet to find any that I like better for long rifles than figured hard sugar maple.  I've made several guns using curly cherry (am working on one right now), and I used curly ash to make handles and other smaller objects.  Both woods can make fine stocks but the figure is very monochromatic when finished.  In other words, the figure is just a slightly different shade of the background color.  It rarely shows the variety of colors that can be achieved with sugar maple.  Figured American black walnut can have beautiful variety of color but much of it (not all by any means) has a purple-brown undertone that I don't like.  I usually warm it up by giving it a wash in dilute yellow aniline dye, which wipes out the undertone.

dave

[Daniel]

  I think when I get to start this it will be maple or walnut. I was wanting something
outside the norm , but the price seems to be outside the norm too.
I like a dark stain rubbed back.

[Jerry V Lape]

Might try some Oregon Myrtle.  Definitely colorful and figured and it has been used for modern gunstocks. 

[oldtravler61]

Fellow here in Michigan. Built a rifle out of apricote wood.  To me it was beautiful. Maybe because the color an grain was so different.