Archive for April 2012

Winchester 94: Rough shaping the stock, continued..

Time to make the top of the stock look less like a block. The process for the top mimics what I did on the bottom. I did use some yellow grease pencil to make the lay-out lines easier to see. Again, I worked on small sections making sure everything stays level and in symmetry.

Start

Left and right first quarter removed

Left and right first quarter removed

Wood pattern on right side

Rear roughing done - right side

Rear roughing done - left side

Rear roughing done - top

Rear roughing done - bottom

In the next post, I will continue at the front end of the stock and work on the pistol grip.

 

Winchester 94: Rough shaping the stock

I am finally going to start changing this block of wood into something that somewhat resembles a stock. Since I started with a fairly thick wood blank, I decided to use the band saw to trim it down a little. After establishing a center-line for the blank in line with the rifle center-line, I marked  out the width to which I wanted to cut the wood.

Marked out

And we now have a thinner stock. I saved the cut-off wood for small future projects.

Thinner!

The next step is to mount two templates that I made in my first semester. First up is the grip cap.

Grip cap

And then the butt plate template.

Butt plate

These templates help me to shape the stock. Now it was time to do some layout work on the stock again. I divided the stock in four equal parts at the butt plate and just behind the pistol grip. I also added the following guidelines to the top and bottom of the stock: top, 0.625″ (1.58cm) just behind the pistol grip that expand to 1.25″ (3.175 cm) at the butt plate and bottom, 0.625 (1.58cm) for the length.

Layout

Now it is time for the shaping to start. The first step is to bring the pistol grip area down to roughly the thickness of the grip cap template on both sides.

Pistol grip

Now it is time to start using the layout guide lines I grew earlier. Rough shaping the stock is done in a few steps and you work with only a small part of the stock. I started with the bottom left side of the stock. First, I filed a small guide groove behind the pistol grip.

Bottom left

I worked this quarter of the stock down to the first set of guide lines. I also had to make sure that the wood stays fairly flat. The tools I used to remove the wood was the flat micro plane and the #49 cabinet rasp. As both of these are fairly narrow, it is not easy to keep the wood flat. This of course applies to all the future work too and is even more crucial in the later stages of shaping the stock. A dip in the wrong place can spoil the looks of the product.

First quarter

Next I worked up to the center-line of the stock.

Left bottom half

The process then repeats on the other side. It is important also keep symmetry between the left and right side during this process. This photograph was taken during the process.

Right bottom in process

Now it is time to narrow the guide-lines at the bottom of the stock. The new guide-lines are 0.25″ (6.35cm) wide.

New guide-lines

And the process repeats. I did make a mistake here. When you get to this point is not needed to do a front guide slot anymore. Lucky for me, it was not too deep! As the process is the same as before, I am only posting a few pictures to show the progression down to the point where the bottom part is rough shaped on both sides. You will also notice that I am slowly shaping the transition area to the pistol grip.

 In the next post on this project I will show the rough shaping progress of the top part of the stock.