A few months back I purchased an old 20 gauge Lefever Nitro Special shotgun. As is often the case, somebody had cut the stock down in length to fit a child. It was too short for me, and my son has been using the gun when we shoot clays and his arms are longer than mine, so it was too short for him too.
The stock as it arrived, with a recoil pad that was falling apart.
When I refinished it, I removed the old recoil pad and put on the thickest I could find, a 1 1/8" Kick-Eez pad. The stock was still too short, so I added a 1/2" Kick-Eez spacer. That was the thickest spacer I could find, and the gun still felt short.
Here is the stock after I refinished it and sporting the recoil pad and additional spacer.
The spacer looked, OK, but the massive lump of black plastic and rubber was not visually appealing. I debated about adding another 1/2″ spacer, but I was not liking the large section of black as it was. So I talked to my son about the idea of making a custom spacer by pouring epoxy. By making our own, we could make it whatever thickness we needed. He was intrigued and I jumped at the chance to get into the workshop with me.
Adjustable epoxy mold.
I originally looked for a silicone pen blank mold, but they were all just a little to small to make blocks big enough to cut out a gun stock spacer. I found this adjustable size mold and thought it would be worth trying. It turns out it can make the perfect size. There is no bottom to it, so I made one with Tuck tape The mold has seams between the sections, that we used small pieces of tape to prevent the epoxy from leaking out.
Pouring the epoxy to make gun stock spacer.
My son wanted a dark gray color and some blue and green in the mix. So he mixed up the three colors then poured them into the mold.
Poring the epoxy colors for the stock spacer.
We had decided we wanted this spacer to be an inch and a quart thick. So we made a mark inside the mold so we would know when to stop adding epoxy. Tip, add more than you need because there will be some waste as you tray to make two opposite faces flat and parallel.
A jack plane is the right tool for the job to make one surface flat.
I used my jack plane to make one surface flat. Then I used a marking gauge to mark the thickness to 1-1/18″ then planed the opposing face until I reached the lines. Then we took the recoil pad off the stock and used it to mark the pattern we needed on the top face of the epoxy block.
The band saw makes it pretty easy to trim the epoxy block to the rough shape of the recoil pad. We used the recoil pad to mark the holes for the screws. After attaching the new spacer and the recoil pad to the stock, the spacer was not level with the wood and would need quite a bit of sanding. I initially use my belt sander with 120 grit on it held in a vice. I put a layer of blue painters tape on the wood, to let me know when I am getting close. Then I gradually bring the spacer and the stock to the belt sander. i had to go slow and not rush it, because a belt sander can be way too aggressive.
The belt sander brought the spacer down to the level of the wood, and the recoil pad.
For hand sanding, I use a flat block of wood, to keep my sanding level.
Using the same slim block of wood, I work my way up through the grit, 120, 180. 220, 400, 600, 800, 1000.
Here is the custom shotgun spacer all sanded smooth.
With the wood and spacer all flush and smooth, it is now time to fill the pores with tripolli / rottenstone and apply several light coats of pure Tung oil. I sun each coat for a few hours to cure the oil.
Here it is with 6 coats of Tung oil.
Custom epoxy gun stock spacer.
The colors are hard to see in these photos but they are just enough to be interesting, but not overpowering. I like the look much better than the plain black, and the gun fits much better.
Previously
- Checkering a gun stock
I recently bought a 94 yr old shotgun. It was in pretty bad shape. Over the years, the checkering on the stock had been worn, sanded, refinished until there was only the faintest trace of it remaining. In most places you could see the dark lines, but could not even feel them with a fingernail. […]
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