I have some Hindi wood goin on here....

[glwenzl]

It is native walnut and 2.25" wide. I have enough to make a FL stock and a buttstock forearm... I decided to start a late winter project and practice making some wood for my NEF....





After giving up on the project because when drilling the hole down the middle it cracked



I decided to finish it anyhow because I was
recently working long hours and depressed about not doing anything so I picked it up and put my frustrations to work.







We’ll see if it’ll work? The forearm is still a block of wood.... I also drilled the hole at the wrong angle and the stock is lower than I wanted??? I have a plan for that but am not sure it is worth the hassle....

This a first for me and although it may not be as good as I hoped for I think I can recover from most all of the mistakes I made learning how to do this.

[hannah]

looks good and i'm sure you can fill those cracks with a good glue before staining... almost everything with wood is probably correctable... so keep up the good work..........

[mitchell]

looks great i wish i could do stuff like that

[quickdtoo]

Me too, I don't have the patience to finish a GSI stock, let alone make a stock from a nice piece of wood, I'd ruin it.

Nice work, glwenzl !!

Tim

[Jimbo47]

Good job on a beautiful piece of wood.

Like Hannah said, those cracks are repairable with a good carpenters wood glue, a fine tipped paint brush and a little dark stain, and they will look like they belong there, especially since they don't run all the way through to the other side, so it's definitely doable.

As for alignment that also can be redone with some imagination, and some re drilling, which isn't a big deal since it won't be visible after it's done.

You've done some good work, and it would be a shame to give up on it, so keep up the project and let us see how it turns out!

[glwenzl]

Thanks for the nice and encouraging words everyone.

Trust me if I can do this anyone of you can too.... I have no wood working experience other than refinishing a few stocks but I do have a band-saw and dermal tool that really helped. I had to buy one long drill bit and barrow another, also bought a serious wood file (that is where I learned how easy wood splinters out leaving big holes that I ended up sanding out instead of filing). I suppose some sort of a power sander will be my next investment....

The wood was just a big ole walnut tree that a local guy decided to take to a saw mill and have planks made from it instead of burning it in his wood stove. I could not tell how nice it was but decided to buy it from him anyhow... 8 bucks

[LaOtto222]

Walnut will crack if it gets too hot. I was turning a walnut lamp and in the sanding process, I got it too hot and it cracked Lessen learned. I have a lot of those over the years. If you can, flex the cracks open as far as you can and then force as much glue as you can into them (get it down deep). Use large hose clamps that are padded (like cardboard) to close the cracks backup and let it set. It will be hardly noticeable. Good work! As you have found out, getting started is the hardest part. The rest is patience, educated guessing and sticking by it. It don't hurt to know how to fix our mistakes either. Even the best make a boo-boo now and then. They are real good at covering, or repairing them. It takes months to engrave a coin die. They make a mistake once in awhile, they pound out the bad area and start engraving again, like I said just got to know how. Good luck to you.