OK, so as some of you may remember a few pages back I posted some images of a catastrophic amount of damage done to the stock of my SMLE. Well I have been a busy little dog with some amateur wood working recently and now can show you what I've done.
Basically at first I had an acquaintance in the states who offered to do a professional repair for free, however this plan was sunk by Australia Post and their archaic rules about shipping gun parts. Even just what amounts to a lump of wood (oh noes it's GUN WOOD = evil!!!!). So I ended up doing the repair myself, I used a fiber glass like two part bonding compound. Really heavy duty stuff which is heat and water resistant and once bonded stronger than the wood around it. Enough talk though here's some pictures of the job.
Here is the repair side on, you can still see the crack but you can see how carefully I clamped and bonded it together. It's is 99% seamless only a small chip was missing from the very bottom about half the size of a grain of rice.
Bottom angle picture of it, the line of break is quite visible however this is raw around the crack, as I needed to remove a small area of finish around the area to do the job. After the refinish it is nearly invisible. You can also see the tiny chip above and to the right of the screw hole.
Inside picture, the shape here doesn't line up perfectly however on the outside it does. I attribute this to the extra bit of thickness the bonding agent may have added. It does not matter though as the forestock fits the rifle like a glove. It's also worth mentioning that I carefully drilled and added a cross dowell in about 2.5cm forward of the magazine cavity for extra strength.
A picture of the end (and my hairy knees) this was the tricky part as the piece of wood here housing the recoil plates was totally sheared off. I carefully hollowed out a cavity at each side of this piece where the reinforcing bolt goes through, so as to get the bonding compound to seep right in and add strength. It worked well the piece is in there rock solid.
I let it cure for three weeks, in the meantime remember the culprit in the stock breaking was a missing stock piece washer which meant the stock bolt was protruding and hammering into the forestock as I fired. I replaced the missing washer, now the stock bolt protrudes maybe half a milimeter, I then put the rifle together and went to the range. It held up beautifully, I put roughly 200 rounds of Pakistani surplus down range and then went home and checked it over, no cracks, no give, solid as a rock.
So now the job is completed, I gave the stock a light sanding all over to rough up and level the finish with the parts I had to strip for the job and then gave it a couple of coats of Penetrol wood oil followed by a single coat of melted beeswax to darken it and match the colour with rest of the stock set.
I am very happy now, SMLE LIVES!!! And thanks to my ham fisted wood skills she's still wearing her original stock
