Shooting Sports > Old Guns, Rifle, Target, Shotgun

Restoring/rebuilding a very old shotgun

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Rancid Crabtree:
I like a challenge and to try things I haven?t done before and this project is a real challenge. Many years ago this old shotgun was wrapped in burlap and buried in the ground and remained there for 7 years. As you would expect, when the gun was unearthed the wood was gone and the metal is very corroded. This particular gun then remained in a state of disrepair for many years afterwards.

The shotgun is a Enders Royal Western 16 Ga. Break action. The top of the barrel is stamped with the following.

?Electro Steel Choke Bored gun patented August 12 1913?

Web searches state that the shotgun was made by Crescent Arms Co., which was associated with H & D Folsom Co. until the demise of both in the early 1930's.

The Enders Royal single shot scattergun was manufactured in an era when it was considered an inexpensive farm tool.

Enders Royal was a "Trade" name used by the Crescent-Davis Firearms Company on shotguns made for the Shapleigh Hardware Company of St. Louis, Missouri. Crescent merged with Davis in 1920, and was bought out by the Savage Firearms Company in 1930. This gun was made somewhere in the 1918 - 1929 timeframe.

 I was asked if I could restore the old gun into service. This is not to be a show piece since the original gun was a hardware store ?farmers? tool.  The goal here is to return the shotgun to usable service to be fired and then perhaps hang on a wall in restored condition. It has sentimental value more than anything. Its not meant to be a trap gun or a shotgun that will see a lot of use

I have resorted a few gun in the past but the guns always had a stock or I could at least purchase a replacement stock. That is not the case with this old shotgun. Weeks of searching for a replacement stock online got me nowhere. Emails to custom stock makers were also dead ends. I have never made a stock before but that?s about to change. I have only modest tools and don?t plan to purchase tools for this project.

Here is the shotgun as I received it.
















Below is the spring mechanism that will go into the forearm stock. The forearm grip of a break action shotgun is removable as the first step in taking the gun apart. Once the fore-grip is removed, the barrel can be removed from the receiver.







My search for a replacement stock got me nowhere but I was able to find a picture of the old gun from an online auction site that sold the gun years ago. This is all I have to go by in regards to making a stock. It?s not much but it?s a start.

It appears that the barrel was blued but the receiver and trigger guard were plated in a metallic finish. While I can cold blue I will need to come up with an alternative for the receiver (or just blue it along with all the other metal parts).



I used that screen image to create a full scale sketch of the stock I hoped to make but again I have never made a gun stock. If I can?t make a stock there is no point in restoring all the metal so stock making is where I have to start.



A few years ago my brother cut down a black walnut tree and had it sawn into dimensional lumber. It?s been sitting in his shed for a few years. He gave me a piece that measures 4" x 8" x 7 feet. Somewhere in that twisted, cracked, checked, knotted and bird crap covered piece of wood, there are two pieces of a gun stock.



I will update as I make progess. This one is going to take a while

Rancid Crabtree:
I had the whole weekend to begin the stock project. That walnut beam is solid and heavy and it looks like there are blonde streaks running through it. I grabbed the hand saw and loped off a chuck for the foregrip stock.





The foregrip is pretty small. I found a good looking piece after cutting it on my table saw.



I have to pocket out for the spring latch that holds the stock to the gun.



I plan on doing as much of this project old school as I can. Chisels, rasps, saws, planes, shaves, carving tools, sanding blocks, etc. I don?t have a milling machine or router. I have a drill press but thats not much good here.



So it begings.



For the smaller features I used an exacto chisel.



I have to make the barrel fit the length of the block.



The table saw is the best choice here.





To get rid of the ridges left by the saw blade I employed the handle from my shop broom and some sandpaper. I can add broom handle to the list of hand tools for the project.



It worked just fine.



Where the barrel meets the receiver it flares out a bit. I laid the barrel on the stock and scribed lines and used carving tools.



I would coat the barrel with pencil carbon and lay it in the stock and give it a twist. It left marks telling me where it made contact and where I needed to take away more wood.



Then some profile cuts and a hole for the screw that mounts the spring mechanism.





Then a whole lot of sanding and a counterbore so the screw head sit below the surface.







After the work was mostly complete (final sanding) those blonde streaks showed up.







I don?t know if they add character or are ugly. Too soon to tell but I don?t feel like starting over since any other piece might have more blonde streaks in it as well. So far so good. No screw ups and no injuries.

To be continued..........

Rancid Crabtree:
The next step is to make sure the spring mechanism fits and the spring can move freely. The spring mechanism is held by a single screw. That screw was missing so I need to replace it. No doubt the original screw was black in color (blued) My local hardware store does not carry machine screws in any color other than shiny zinc plated. Now worries. I polished off all the plating by spinning the screw in a drill and using 800 grit sandpaper then blued the screw head with the last remains of my bottle of Brownells Dicropan cold bluing and then gave it a light oil coating. I have had good results with Dicropan in the past so I need to replenish my supply for the rest of the parts of this shotgun.



Here are the before and after pictures of the screw. After polishing



After bluing.


 

To dress up the appearance of the screw (since it has to be seen for removal) and to protect the wood from being crushed by the spinning of the screw head into the wood I drilled the hole slightly larger than the head and will use a cup and fiber washer from the hardware store to spread out the load on the wood. I like the look and the fit seems good.



The spring mechanism fits well in the chiseled out area.



Now for the real test, does it fit and does it work??



The broom handle gets an A+ for fit.



Im not sure what finish the original stock had back in the 1920?s but I can be sure it didn?t come out of a rattle can. It may have been some sort of shellac or varnish but more likely was been boiled linseed oil as that was a typical gun stock finish (and still is for high end guns) It may have also been tung oil which is still used as a gun stock finish. Both Boiled lindseed and Tung oil are available at the local hardware store and both are drying oils (unlike mineral oil that would be used on cutting boards). The major difference in tung and boiled linseed oils is the dry time. Linseed oil means 6 to 10 days between coats since its very slow drying. If I want to apply 6 to 8 coats, that would means months worth of waiting. Tung oil can be reapplied after 24 hours meaning the 8 coats will cost me just over a week so I will go with the tung oil. I added a makeshift handle to hold onto while doing the final sanding with 800 grit and for applying the tung oil.



A hand rubbed finish means just that. The brush I will use to apply the tung oil is one of a set of ten that I got from my parents on my first birthday and despite projects like this (and growing up on a farm) I still have all ten of those brushes after 50 years.



Here is the foregrip after the first of many coats. Not very impressive but that first coat was sucked in nice and deep by the thirsty wood and will lay down the base for the next 7 coats.





One stock piece (sort of) complete. Time to start the butt stock. In the meantime I placed an order for some needed supplies for this project. These supplies are about 10 times the cost of the original shotgun when new.



To be continued????

Rancid Crabtree:
I don?t have the tools (tall drill press) to pull off drilling a 16 inch deep hole through the entire butt stock for the mounting bolt that attaches the stock to the receiver so I need an alternate way to make a butt stock with a way to access the bolt for assembly.

The long bolt that holds the gun to the stock was not with the gun so I need a replacement. My hardware store did not carry a 5/16 fine thread machine screw as long as I need note with a straight slotted head for a screwdriver so I bought a bolt and slotted it myself.



It dawned on me while looking at some of the knives I?ve made and the bows I have made that there might be a way to make the stock that fits with the simple tools I have and things I have built in the past. Then I got to thinking about the trend in gun stocks being laminated from many layers of wood and epoxy (some seem to have more epoxy than wood). I will make a laminated stock with only two laminations. I will split the stock in half to pocket out for the long bolt then epoxy it back together.
Today?s epoxies are very strong and I have had great luck with them for knife handles and laminated bows I have built so I have no concerns that it will bond this walnut with strength matching a solid piece of wood.

Back to the Walnut beam. This looks like a good section. Yes that is dried blood on the beam. I hauled the beam home with my gun season buck in the back of my truck and blood got on the beam.



Here is a view of the end grain. Perhaps there wont be any blond streaks in this piece. I am at the complete opposite end from where I got the forearm grip.



I cleaned up the beam and then sent it through my table saw creating a book end, matched set of slabs with one slab being slightly thicker than the other which will make sense later on. I dont have a planer but I was able to sand the two surfaces down to get rid of the saw marks so that the glue line will be very thin and clean.



I used the table saw to cut a slot for the screw and another for the washer under the head of the bolt. I had to repeat it for both halves. Then I used a chisel to square up where the curve of the blade did not cut away the wood.



Then I needed to remove the wood where the shoulder of the receiver will fit.  That part is about a ? thick. This will leave a square shoulder but the back of the receiver is a full round.







Using chisels and carving tools I removed the bulk of the material and then went back to the broom handle trick but scaled down to a stainless rod that was close to the diameter I needed. I wrapped it with a few extra wraps of sandpaper to get to the proper curve.



This is where is gets rough. There are timing issues. The new radius at the back must match on each side. That?s easy enough but at the exact time the wood and metal meet at the back, the wood and metal at the end of the stock must also match or there will be a gap at one end or the other. This has to be addressed on each half. I can rough out the profile with a coping saw but then the detail work will come from chisels, knives and sandpaper.

To make things more difficult, the conture at the receiver end is not a square cut. Its beveled backwards. Who came up with this design?????  Its like they said, ?lets make this as difficult as possible so that in 100 years the guy making a replacement stock will have to pull out his hair to duplicate this work?.





The hand saw gets me close and then carving tools and sandpaper take it the rest of the way.





To be continued????????..

Rancid Crabtree:
Both halves of the receiver joint are complete then the halves are rough cut to the shape I need.





For added strength and for alignment I will use 9 hardened steel pins hidden within the stock. This will add to the epoxies shear and tensile strength but it also ensures the flat for the washers on both halves lines up during the slippery clamping process 



This slow cure epoxy has a 3,000 PSI tensile rating, can be drilled and tapped, is waterproof and heat resistant and does not shrink. It also has a good wetting property (since its slow cure). Their data sheet shows a 1,345 PSI shear strength on maple to maple. As  have stated I have used this many times in the past on wood laminations with incredible success.



Epoxy likes rough surfaces so before I applied the epoxy I roughed up both halves with a bandsaw blade by bending a blade into a ?u? shape and raking the teeth across the wood.  Its important to coat both surfaces for the best adhesion. It uses more glue (which oozes out during clamping) but you can be sure you wont have any dry spots starved of epoxy.



Light clamping pressure is all that is needed to ensure you don?t squeeze out the epoxy. After 24 hours the epoxy will be fully cured the it will be one solid piece. I used flattened stick to make sure to scrape out the epoxy the oozed into the channel for the bolt. While the epoxy was still curing I lowered the large washer down into the hole so it stays with the stock. Only the lock washer will be removed with the bolt during disassembly in the future.

The Brown truck made a delivery to the house .



To be continued???????..

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