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Winchester Gum wood Stocks 1894

Rex Mahan
Most all of the Model 94s / 1894s that Ive seen with Gum Wood/ Fruit wood the wood seems to be in rough shape. Is there something in particlular that makes them more prone to going bad than the Walnut?

I have a gum/ fruit wood gun that has pretty nice nice wood and was just wonder about this
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Comments

6 comments

Date Votes
  • Herschel
    applewood and gum wood are softer.

    Edit: For years I have heard of the early SRC stock wood as being applewood. I suppose that was a misdescription. Having grown up in timber country and around a sawmill I should have known that it was not likely that large enough apple trees were not available to make gun stocks. Sorry to have contributed to the deluge of misinformation that shows up on the forums.
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  • Bert H.
    Winchester used just two types of wood for the standard stocks, walnut and gumwood. Any other type of wood was a special order (maple, cherry, mahogany, etc.), and I have never seen or heard of apple wood ever being used.

    As Herschel pointed out, gumwood is softer than walnut, which makes it more prone to damage.
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  • Bert H.
    I went through my notes and found that a grand total of just (22) Model 1894s were special ordered with non-standard wood stocks; most of which were various types of maple.

    Birds Eye Maple - 9
    Maple - 3
    Fancy Maple - 2
    Burl Maple - 1
    Pin Head Maple - 1

    English Walnut - 3
    Cherry - 1
    Mahogany - 1
    Redwood - 1
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  • deerhide
    Hershel;
    Applewood is way,way harder than walnut.Harder than rock maple even.
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  • Herschel
    deerhide, What I was told was applewood must have been gum since Bert's post eliminates applewood as having been used on Winchester rifle stocks.
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  • Bergtreffer
    This is certainly interesting. I never knew that gumwood was used for rifle stocks. I thought albeit mistakenly that it all was walnut, and that birch was used on less expensive weapons. I took a look on the WWW to see about the properties of gumwood, and I found the site http://www.craftsman-style.info/finishing/065-gumwood.htm to have real interesting information.
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