What real wood for stocks?

[Retro grouch]

Has anybody relpace the plastic on there firearms with real wood? I'm thinking of redoing a couple of m1928 tommy guns, and was wondering if anybody has any sugestions for scale color and grain. The 1/1 was made of walnut.

Thanks,

RG

[Littletankman]

Hi mate I havent altered guns yet done tooling. But did make some 1:1 scale German WW2 G43 replicas for a re enactment group . I used ply for the stocks as the originals were laminated . But for the Thompson this may seem simple but use a soft wood , easy to work with and dye it walnut .

Andy

[Bob a Job]

Beech was commonly used for rifle stocks and still is , some can be found with interesting grain but in the main it is plain , its easy to work it will give a good finish , easy to stain and polish .
A good supply for 1/6 th would be in old furniture such as sofas and arm chairs as its used for frame construction .
If your feeling artistic you can paint in some dark lines to represent the grain of walnut , military rifle stocks were often finished with boiled linseed oil [ BLO ] Have a look on surplusrifle.com for stock work by candyman , there are many articles on stock finishing and how to refurb a stock .

Bob

[pzrwest]

Basswood would be an excellent wood to use as it is tight grain and is easy to carve, and takes stain well

[thetoysurgeon]

Lowes has a assortment of small cuts of pine, poplar, and oak. Hobby lobby carries basswood.

[johnro6659]

I would pick basswood for the same reasons pzrwest stated. If you use wood with a large grain it won't look to scale the tighter the grain the more to scale it will look. It's one of the reasons most hobbyists use is basswood.

[pzrwest]

With laminated stocks there were two colors of glue used, white or red which gave the look of blonde or a redish color depending on which color of glue used