![]() The grain thru the wrist is what the stock makers used to call 'Musket Grain'. Long term the weight of the components can move the wood out of place in small ways. That can be from humidity changes but the rifle just sitting in the upright position in a rack or against a wall,or horizontal on 2 pegs can do it as well. Old damage can remain near invisible for a long time as it can be the hair line type and goes un-noticed till either the wood gets displaced again and shifted,the edges can be felt. I agree that the crack looks like the type of damge commonly found from the butt striking something,the old 'butt stoke' swing will do it. I've heard that when there's zero gap, glue is better than epoxy. Gluing it should stop it from opening itself up. I don't know what started the crack (heavy hit as said probably), but the cycles of changing conditions each year will make it worse and worse over time to at least some degree. In that case, I'd store them top-down, so the stocks rest on top of the barreled actions, and decently well supported. With that setup, they'd be stored horizontal, which museums usually love for storing collection pieces. If you can put them in a better sealed container like a tote, and in the drawer of dresser or something, that would actually help a lot. So, the first container being the house, the next maybe being a closet, then the cabinet. Same with bookcases.Īlso, the more containers the guns or any objects are in, the more stabile they are. don't have gun cabinets on exterior walls. Try to keep the temp the same as well.Īlso, best to store guns muzzle down, so that weight (some of these guns, like say my Jap Type 18 Murata, are pretty heavy hunks of of metal) is supporting itself mostly.Ī couple tricks that help. Humidify in winter, dehumidify in summer. Biggest thing do your best to stabilize the environmental conditions for the guns. Since a gun has both, you just have to aim for the middle. Wood likes to be stored in more moist conditions, while metals in dryer air. Another issue is it's generally worse direction for oils to drip/settle towards, usually ending up in recoiling areas and around/near/under tangs. The repeated cycles are what causes the gap to widen so bad on Japanese guns that aren't stored in stable conditions.Īnother thing that does these old guns no favors is heavy metal putting weight downward on the stocks, especially the recoiling areas. Summer-winter cycles with wide swings inside, especially with RH, are hell on guns. Stocks expand and contract with temp and RH. So if it was shipping damage it would have been prior to my owning it. I suppose there is a chance that this crack was the result of some past shipping damage, but I drove it home from Allentown myself. There is one on each side of the stock, basically a mirror image of each other. For now, I have just loosened the trigger guard screws. When I take it apart I will try to relieve a tiny amount using a file or sand paper. My initial guess is that the wood is shrinking and the wood that touches the rear of the trigger guard is too tight. I could move this rifle into a less secure crate in the basement where the humidity is a bit higher, if you think that will help enough to be worth it. ![]() I am in the middle of going through the herd for inspection, so I put this one aside and will take it apart once I finish with the others. That reinforces my idea that the wood has shrunk a bit. I tried to take off the trigger guard to check the inside, but it did not come off easily with the barrel still on. I suspect that the wood is shrinking a bit and possibly affecting the crack. ![]() Unfortunately, the humidity in my house is about 15% this time of year. On one side I can actually feel the crack with my finger, so I think it may be shifting a bit. I checked my previous photos and notes and see that the crack existed at the time of my first careful inspection in November 2017, but it struck me as possibly a bit worse now. This is on my 1893 Spanish Navy Mauser, so I am a bit bummed to put it mildly. I was doing my semi-annual inspection and noticed two hairline cracks originating near the rear of the trigger guard and moving back through the stock. ![]()
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