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Best Glue for Stock Repair?

Gazz

Stainless
Joined
Sep 7, 2004
Location
NH
I am in the process of repairing the forend of an o/u shotgun that had split down the middle and then "repaired" by the owner. I had the gun originally to fix an intermittent firing issue but when test firing that repair, the forend came apart after the 8th shot. So I have carefully picked away all the old glue, drilled both sides for invisible cross pins (hardwood dowels) and am ready to glue and clamp. The wood is not oil soaked. In the past I have used the Brownells AccraGlas, 24 hour epoxy, super glue, Gorilla Glue and Titebond. All have seemed to work okay but this one worries me since it has already failed. When it failed, probably from a poor fit during the repair, the glue stuck to one side and took a thin veneer of wood from the other side. While I was careful picking the unknown glue from the wood, I also had to remove some wood as the glue had stuck securely. When the two pieces are clamped together, there is the slightest gap due to missing wood so whatever glue is used it will need to able to fill a slight gap and still function as glue. Had I continued the job without asking here, I would have gone with the long cure time epoxy with added dye. I do realize that there be many new kinds of adhesives that I am not aware of and wonder if there is something better? Thanks for any comments!
 
AccraGlas with brown dye and floc to thicken?

Titebond sure won't work on a previous repair because it won't bond to plastic or most hardened glues.

The Brownells product is meant for stock repair where most of the other stuff is hobbyist-home repair stuff.

I would wet the wood with unfilled AccraGlas and then add floc to the remainder to fill the gap.
 
accraglass but without the dye or flock. Reason being that clear acraglass tends to disappear in the varnish after whereas ive found the brown dye sticks out.
Leave the gouges alone for the first step.

To fill that gap, take a piece of the wood you removed for the repair and make sawdust with it. Then mix that sawdust with the acraglass and fill the gouges and sand and finish the foreend.
Sounds like your repair will hold better due to you drilling for dowels.
 
AccraGlas was formulated as a bedding compound and I have heard that it does not become 100% hard. That may be a good thing in this case though. As I stated above, I have picked all the previously used glue off.
 
My go-to for something like this is an epoxy for wooden boat building, System 3s General Purpose epoxy. In thin layers it is clear, it is a marine epoxy so contact with water is not an issue, and you will be hard-pressed to find a glue that works as well.
 
AccraGlas was formulated as a bedding compound and I have heard that it does not become 100% hard. That may be a good thing in this case though. As I stated above, I have picked all the previously used glue off.

There are 2 different Acraglas compounds. The original liquid gets rock hard and is what you need for your permanent repair. The second type is the gel and is better for bedding and remains very slightly resilient after full cure. It contains nylon resin and is less likely to undergo brittle failure under compression as when used in bedding. It is also easier to remove a bedded action that was not properly prepared and is stuck in the stock. The high viscosity also aids in applying the compound initially.

RWO
 
You may also find that, after you make the initial repair in the crack, laying some fiberglass mesh or even screen door mesh over the crack on the inside of the forearm and flooding that area with Accraglass will help keep any forces from gripping the forearm from trying to re split the wood. Just has to be a thin layer.
 
ok if it took some of the wood off as you described the original glue stuck to part of the wood
anyway.

but now you have a gap so Titebond is out it needs a very good fit,
samething for the thin super glues, gorilla glue well it needs to be able
to penetrate into the grain, so that probably won't do it either.

so that leaves epoxy like David recommended, acraglass would also work more or less
the same thing.

might want to consider using cross bolts with pugs to hide them,
and look for the reason the forend is splitting in the first place there shouldn't
be much force trying to split it in the first place.
 
As important as the glue, even more so, is getting the glue out into the crack. To do this drill a hole hole that is perpendicular to the crack and passes through the crack, or as perpendicular as possible. Drill a few along the crack if it is a long crack. They should pass through the crack but only just a little. Then fill the hole with your adhesive and use a piece of dowel or something that fits snugly into the hole as a piston to force the adhesive out into the crack. It generally works very well and often can be done from inside the stock in such a way that you can't see it. I have used epoxy for this. Clamp after forcing the epoxy in. Clean off excess epoxy with lacquer thinner. Generally the fixed stock is as good as new.
 
Thanks for all the suggestions. I'll check which AccraGlass I have tomorrow. I'll also investigate how much room there is between the bottom barrel and the forend but I do think there is intimate contact now so no real room for laying in some cloth although that is a good idea. No problem getting glue into the crack, the forend is two pieces! I have used the hydraulic method before but I typically try to drill along the axis of the crack if possible. Clamp, drill, unclamp and add glue, drive in the piston dowel and clamp again.
Why it cracked is a good question but I am guessing a poor fit somewhere. I will look into glass bedding it to the barrel set and latch mechanism.
I should have taken pictures of the insides of this gun when I had it apart as it's an interesting design. The gun is a Boucher made in France and uses strikers - it's unlike any other shotgun I've ever worked on.
 
Actually, that may be part of the problem. If the barrels are touching the inside of the forearm, and the wood takes in moisture and moves, it may be binding enough to allow even slight movement to crack the wood. Think along the lines of free floating a rifle barrel. Maybe a .020" gap under the barrel would eliminate that possibility. You could sand down the inside, put a few layers of tape on the bottom of the barrel and then fill with accraglass gel and bed the forearm to the barrel. When you take the tape off, you have your gap and the inside of the forearm now has an added layer of epoxy to help keep any future bumps from cracking anything.
 
A couple of things to take note of with Acraglass:

1. It's epoxy, yes, but the #1 issue in bedding compounds is dimensional stability. As such, Acraglass doesn't keep shrinking the way that other epoxy glues tend to over time; once Acraglass sets up, it stays the size you get on (eg) day 2 as on day 200. I've seen people use other epoxy compounds for bedding, and on day 2, their bedding job seems beautifully tight - two years later, you can wiggle the barreled action in the bedding. That's because the super-strong epoxy glue they used as bedding compound continued to shrink - which would be a good thing as a glue, but not such a good thing as a bedding compound.

2. Acraglass is OK as a glue, but it's only just OK. When I'm repairing stocks (or gluing wood together on new stocks), I prefer to use Titebond III, which is waterproof when it is hardened, but can be easily cleaned up with a damp rag when it's still wet. It's also a very good wood glue. This assumes you can get a very good fit-up between the two pieces of wood; if you have a gap, Titebond won't be as good at filling a gap as something like Acraglass.

3. You can add dyes to Acraglass. I do it all the time. Flocking? I'm not sure that I'd add any flocking. When I need additional strength in areas, I might add strips of fiberglass or carbon fiber, but loose flocking? I'd have to think real hard on that.
 
wtf!!!!!!!!!


If there is not enough room for a layer of glass, make room for the glass.

As to the strength of Acraglass with floc added, I used it to repair a handle on a sledge hammer years ago. There were 3-4 splits from the head to about half the length. After the repair it lasted for years.
 
I ended up repairing it with some JB weld Marine epoxy. It is grey in color and while the repair sort of looked like wood grain, I used a brown sharpie to color it which blended it in more better. If you came across this gun and looked at it casually, you would not notice the repair. I think the reason it broke was because the forend iron fit poorly in the wood as did the latch mechanism. I used some accraglas to remove the slop in the fit and am hopeful it will hold up well.
Thanks for all the comments!
 








 
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