How to make laminate stock blanks?

[DenisA]

I'm wondering if anyone here has successfully made their own laminate stock blanks. I'm keen to try and understand the process.
What are some good timbers to use and combine?
What sort of glue is used?
How much pressure needs to be applied and for how long?

Any advice or experience would be great.

[Dave P]

You will find some interesting reading here
http://ausvarmint.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=19289&hilit=laminate+stock+making

Some very handy lads and willing to share knowledge as well.

[Nathan P]

I have made about a dozen stocks that have all been laminated in one way or another, some have been done in two pieces or up to 5 pieces. I use west systems epoxy to glue it together making sure I alternate the direction of the grain in each piece of timber and clamp it together with as many sash clams I can fit on it, you don't need heaps of pressure just enough to pull it all together, to much will push all the glue out

Hope that helps

[DenisA]

Thanks Dave, I have to register, but I'll check out your link.

Thanks Nathan, is that the Gflex 650?

[bobeager]

You should look at 12.5mm Hoop Pine Marine Ply manufactured by Austral Plywoods. Last sheet (1200 x 2400) cost just over $220. This is of superior quality to the so called "Marine Ply" that you find at Hardware Warehouses. I use an epoxy 2 part boat builders glue designated RO45.

Like Nathan, I also make up laminates from specialty timbers, but the laminates are relatively thick, ranging from 10mm to 30mm. The "thinness" of the laminate will depend on how thin you timber supplier can make them.

If you are successful in making a Rutland type laminate let us know.

[Nathan P]

For memory I'm using the west systems 105 epoxy and 205 hardener

[pjifl]

If you are new to this field, I suggest reading quite a lot from boat building books and sites.
You can never have enough clamps and one needs to consider how to apply clamping force spaced well in from the edges. And how to lock the strips together so they cannot slide yet can compress easily. When clamped, the sheets have a tendency to slide, especially with Epoxy glues. Many clamps are far superior to a few big ones.

If you are doing many it is worth welding up a STRONG device with some solid RHS steel top and bottom. Then make many 'push' screw 'clamps' from threaded rod and nuts welded onto some pipe. Weld a nut onto the rod so you can grip it with a spanner and blunt point the top of the threaded rod where it pushes against the 'roof' if that makes sense.
Careful preparation is the success to good results because you need a few extra hands during the laminating and clamping.

I used primarily Urea Formaldehyde glue although most will move to Epoxy. This was after a professional Boat builder friend did many tests on different types of wood.

Usually I made blanks that could be band sawed to give two stocks and the clamping box was from some old very large steel channel.

Choose you wood carefully. Many of the 'nice' timbers are oily and very dense and do not glue well and are heavy and are not the best to deaden vibrations. And they are just too heavy.
Often the best timbers are what many would consider 'inferior and uninteresting'. Ash is about the densest timber that glues well and Tableland Silver Quandong is excellent in boatbuilding.

I did make some from furniture timbers but quickly gravitated to ply. Stocks made from the furniture hardwoods may be a beautiful work of art but in my opinion the cheapest porous plywood makes the best shooting stocks. That is assuming the ply has been made with a good waterproof glue. You can usually check this by bandsawing and planeing an extremely long scarf on a test strip of ply. You should see dark or even red glue lines.

I laminated good marine Australian Coachwood ply for stocks and some el cheapo ply to use as templates for a copying machine I made. The good marine ply finished nicely stained and polished.

The last few stock I made were from some of the laminates blocks of the cheaper lower quality ply. They had been sitting around 'maturing' for about 10 years.
They are lighter and in my opinion better shooters. Once my stocks were a work of art.
Now they look ugly but shoot extremely well !

My entire outlook on stocks has changed. Now, I believe if you are not willing to cut and modify and add plastibond to a stock as your body and shooting style changes it is of little use and can hold you back. If you are not happy to do that to your beautiful stock, display it proudly on the wall and move to something more functional.

Peter Smith.

[Old Trev-39]

Hi Denis,
I have made a few laminated stocks, mainly from good quality 6 or 8mm ply and used Epiglue as adhesive with good results. If you want to ad some colour to them you can stain both sides of the ply with different coloured wood dies. I make a rough template of the stock shape and lay it out on the sheet of ply at different angles to counteract any warping which may occur in the smaller pieces. I make up a rough frame to place the pieces in using news paper to stop it all sticking to the frame. I use a lot of "G" clamps and sliding clamps and do them up firm and about 10 minutes later just give the a little more pressure to make up for the ouzing out of the glue. I leave it clamped for 48 hours. I do all the straight work on my mill and do any curved cutting using a 100 mm. Zec disk in a angle grinder. Do this outside as dust goes everywhere. A wood gouge and rasp are also useful tools as well. To finish I use Cabots Cabothane clear in either satin or gloss. A sanding after the first coat with sandpaper and a good rub down with steel wool between further coats. I generally have a good finish after 4 coats. Using steel wool between final coats gives a finish without any small scratches that you can get with sandpaper.
Have fun Denis an you will have the satisfaction of producing a product that is functional for you and looks good to.
Cheers,
Trevor.

[Longranger]

I have an old TR rifle here that has a plywood made from Tableland satin sycamore ("Blood-in-the-bark"). Not sure if that is available anymore as it came from a now declared world heritage area. Makes a nice light stable stock though and comes up nicely. Phil Mastin made it when he was based in Home Hill.

He used a reasonable sized hydraulic press and I think epoxy resin to form the blanks when I saw him making them.

[DenisA]

Thankyou so much gents for so much information. You've all given me plenty of info to start researching with. I like the idea of making my own laminate blanks but there's a lot to consider including cost, space, available resources and practicality.

I definitely don't want to start something I'm not fully prepared for. That includes having the right tools for the job.

I have an old hydraulic press frame at the workshop that I think could be modified to make sturdy and large press box with a scew type system as Peter has described. I'll have to ponder some more and look around the net to see the press's that others are using. Have you guys got any pics of your equipment?

[pjifl]

I used 19 mm Marine ply for most of my good laminated stocks.
It gets very expensive making blocks 3 inch thick. I standardized on 3 layers of 19mm and made mine back in my TR days.
The old blanks I dragged out ended up as F class stocks and the wider fore end was achieved by gluing on some side strips afterwards where needed. One was experimented with by adding the strips using double sided tape and is still in that state. It allowed me to experiment with different angles to the sides of the fore end. Still wins shoots. A later stock had the strips epoxied on but the tape held foreene shot just as well. One day !!!

The clamping device was big and heavy and has been cut up to make room for more recent junk. No pics.

The copying machine still exists but is now out in the rain and never used. It was simply two spindles chain driven in unison but there was provision to invert the rotation of one spindle by repositioning an idler. Thus one template would produce either LH or RH stocks.

The roughing cutter could not finish deep reentrant curves and these had to be done later by hand. I used a larger vicious cutter for most of the shaping but a smaller ball end router bit for finer work on as much of the reentrant depths as possible. Thumb hole stocks needed a lot of hand finishing. A better machine setup would have done better.
Strips of flexible wood and plastic sheet with a strip of quality sanding paper just held on their face were invaluable for finishing surves along a stock. And pieces of PVC pipe of different diameters wit sand paper wrapped around them are flexible enough to shape around inside thumbholes. You will soon build up a collection of formers for the sandpapering. Belt sanding power tools of different sizes are invaluable at times but beware. They can ruin a stock very quickly.

Channels were done on a milling machine using endmills and large round cutters I made of exact sizes to suite some actions. Be careful with milling machines - wood chips and dust promotes rusting so after a run you have to take off any vises and other equipment for a thorough clean and oil. And there are a LOT of chips flying. The Copying machine ideally should not live in the same shed as machine tools.

All my latest stocks are now close to square in section. F class does not need snug personal fits (except maybe in a few spots) and holding and clamping square stocks is so much easier and they are faster to make and usually stronger. Beautiful stocks sell rifles and usually have tiny gaps and give poor cooling that give more trouble if for example a small pebble finds its way into the gap. In my opinion none of this has a place on a serious target rifle.

If you want to do a real job on laminated ply, staining shows nice patterns. You need to fill and sand quite a few times because of the different grain directions. End grain exposed in ply takes a LOT of filling coats. A lot of end grain shows everywhere. Like all quality furniture, the final repeated sanding and lacquering or whatever you use is the key to the end result. Staining is a two edged sword ! While it can produce a very nice finish, damage is almost impossible to make invisible.

One of the things that used to make me almost cry was to make a target stock of larger dimensions (especially width) than normal then have to cut a ridiculously deep slot for the bolt handle. Very much worse for bolt handles locking very low. It is a very weak spot in the stock. Subsequently I modified the bolt handles of my Omarks so the bolt locks with the handle horizontal. At least Barnard have that right.

Sorry - I am reminiscing. Much of this will be useless to you. Whether you make beautiful stocks or not it can be very rewarding.

Peter Smith.

[johnk]

Peter,

Your essential purity of thought is always salutary.

John

[williada]

Denis,
Not the prettiest of devices but they are practical. When you live in the sticks you have to make do. The first picture is a shuttle copier to which I attach a router. The pattern can be traced and rotated. The second copier is a 4 hinged box attached and hinged to a carrier – a parallelogram copier. The pattern is traced and copied. Pattern and work piece can be rotated too but I flip each side for finer cuts. I use a router for barrel channel in a vice first and drill takedown screw holes next then profile shape. Finish with hand tools like Peter. If you are not laminating, stick to woods with a density of 33 inch pound such as walnut or blackwood to produce the right harmonics. In the picture, the stock like cut outs are yet to be glued.

The third picture is a simple way to do annealing. The gas is swung away based on stopwatch intervals. Its a cheap drill press I turned on its head. Just thought I would throw it in while I had the camera.

Other people’s advice is excellent.

Shuttle Copier

Parallelogram Copier
Annealer

[DenisA]

Thanks David and Peter. David your right, the input here has been amazing, I never expected this much experience to be shared. Thanks so much everyone and thanks for the pics David.

[Old Trev-39]

Hi Denis,
As an add on to my previous post, my first stock before a milling machine I used a gouge, rasp, zec disk and sandpaper around a piece of 1''galv. water pipe to do barrel channel. It took some time but got it done and it is still in use. So if you have the time you do not need any expensive tools.
Cheers,
Trevor.