Taking a shine to stock finishing
Shane Scase tells Mike Yardley how he achieves the ideal finish
London-trained gunsmith Shane Scase lights up when he speaks of wood. Although he is just 25, he has already made a name for himself due to his oil-finishing services. We first met at my local gun shop, Eastern Sporting, where he works during the week. Scase enjoys working in this well-run modern firearms business, but with an old-school apprenticeship under his belt, he also spends much time in a well-equipped home workshop; it bears witness not only to his chosen craft but his deep interest in firearms and shooting sports of all kinds.
With a life-long interest in the gun trade, Scase undertook his apprenticeship soon after finishing school at 16. “I grew up shooting with my grandad, my uncle and my dad,” he tells me. “I knew I wanted to do something in the gun trade.” He looked around at colleges and apprenticeship schemes. BA Systems and Accuracy International caught his eye. However, these were all about computers and CAD design and he wanted to acquire more traditional skills. His father had noted sagely in discussions about his future: “If you can learn to do it by hand, you can always learn to do it by machine, but you can’t do it the other way round.”
With this in mind, the two went to see Jim Spalding, a master stocker and former boat-builder on Mersea Island (and a man who, serendipitously, I first went to see when I was a similar age to Scase). This sparked more serious interest and sometime later his mother noticed Watson Bros in Bermondsey, makers of best guns, were advertising an apprenticeship – not something often seen in the small ads. Scase found himself on the road again, driving with his dad to meet Michael Louca.
“I showed him images of stocks I had refinished,” he recalls, “and an airgun
moderator that I had scratch built at home, and Michael offered me a position based on my predicted GCSE grades.”
However, Louca specified that, once Scase left school, he should work for three months in the real world before coming to him. The sensible idea was that he should get used to the workplace, rather than the school environment, before starting with Watson Brothers.
Scase arrived at Watson’s in September 2013. “Initially, I found it physically hard, standing on my feet for eight hours a day,” he says. For the first two weeks, he learnt how to square up a piece of metal with a file – the classic apprentice’s task. After that, he progressed on to a triangle that had to be fitted into a female part with no daylight gaps – “something I never want to do again. It was horrible.” Next, it was lathe work, which involved turning pins, strikers and cocking rods. “I stayed at that for about three months. I remember Michael said to me at the end of it: ‘Tell your dad you’ve earned half your wages,’ meaning I had done well. Over the next nine months, I moved to polishing steel parts and building lockwork. It was about then that I began serious oil-finishing.”
With wood, Scase had found his passion. “I learned how to raise the grain on gun stocks first, then how to get the colour right, achieving the best possible result with different oils. I didn’t then, and I still don’t, use stains. I don’t find it works with oil-finishes. I want to bring out the natural beauty of the wood without altering the colour too much. I want to enhance it.
To do this, you are mainly using alkanet root oil mixed with boiled linseed. Boiled oil dries quicker than raw – raw linseed barely dries at all. I use a two-part oil – mainly linseed-based, as discussed, but with terebene driers, a small amount of beeswax and a lead additive (the precise formula is my own trade secret) for glasslike shine.
“The first part, mainly linseed-based oil, is applied and left for roughly two hours until it’s tacky. When that is ready, we go straight on to the second-part oil, which I call a preservative or rubbing-off oil. It’s not linseed based, although another natural oil is part of this second-stage process.
"I learned how to raise the grain first, then how to get the colour right "
The clearer second-stage oil has a small percentage of thinners, a little teak oil and a bit of lead additive, too, to enhance shine.”
The stock is then left to harden for 24 hours before being burnished with ‘rotten stone’ (a pumice-like abrasive in fine powder form that hardens the previous layer to create a hard shell). This process of oiling and burnishing is repeated up to 25 times to create the top finish. On average, the whole job takes about six weeks.
Scase grades his finishes – bronze, silver and gold (the equivalent of a best London) – depending on how many coats are applied and the level of refinish required or specified. A bronze finish does not include removal of significant damage, such as bad dents; a silver finish is a full finish with 15 topcoats; and gold is ‘London best’, with preparatory work done as it would be for a best London bench-made gun and the full 25 coats of finish. However, Scase stresses that each gun is different, so sometimes more than 25 coats will be required – occasionally, 30 or more.
When the oiling is done, the gun is put back together and the chequering is cleaned with a fine wire brush and a chequering tool, if required. The function of trigger and safety are tested and the breech pin and/or stock bolt tightened. The gun and refinished stock is then left for a few days to harden before delivery.
Customers are advised how to maintain the finish. What has been applied is entirely natural and breathable, so it will require a preservative oil to maintain the finish and, in particular, its shine. As with any oil finish, it can go cloudy if wet, especially within the first few months of application. It is best to use a protective wax before shooting in the rain. As this impressive and hard-working young man says, “A fresh oil finish is easily ruined if misused. It’s a tough finish once fully hardened and easily maintained and repaired if ever required. After all the hours that go into a first-class traditional finish, it really is worth the small amount of effort to maintain it properly.”
To contact Shane Scase, call 07817795915 or visit oilfinishing.co.uk
"It’s a tough finish once fully hardened and easily maintained and repaired"
CRACKING WALNUT
The wood used for most European sporting gun stocks is Juglans regia (walnut). Other woods may be used occasionally for small-scale artisan production in the USA, including cherry, maple and myrtle (all of which may be seen in muzzle-loading guns). Beech is commonly seen in some cheaper, mass-made guns (including most air rifles and rimfire rifles), and birch is used frequently in laminated stocks.
Walnut is a slow-growing, deciduous tree with pinnate leaves, found from the Balkans to the Himalayas and throughout Europe. It is also grown in the USA and New Zealand. The native American walnut is Juglans negra, sometimes called ‘black walnut’ (actually a deep red colour). This is also used for gunstocks and may be encountered in Japanese-made Brownings and high-grade Mirokus.
Juglans hindsii, also known as Juglans californica, Northern California walnut or ‘Claro’, is also encountered in the US and much used for upmarket stocking there. (The American woods are not popular with British gunsmiths, who prefer the working qualities, density and strength of European and Asian wood.)
Centuries of military and sportinggun production in Britain depleted our walnut forests and we turned to French and, more recently, Turkish imports. Walnut, naturally a golden honey colour, varies tremendously in character, colour and pattern, depending on where it comes from and how it is grown. The prettiest wood, the most figured, tends to be created in poorer soil where it struggles. Wood grown on chalk or gravel can show darker black streaks that may be the consequence of dry growing seasons.
Wood for stocks usually comes from older trees – 200 years or more – often after they have stopped producing nuts (which are themselves a cash crop in many countries). Trees may be nearly dead when felled (which may not produce desirable wood if natural oils have depleted). The best part of the trunk for gunstock walnut is the root buttress – the wood two feet or so above and below ground. It is the strongest because of the weight it has had to bear and gives the best figure, too – the growth rings going through at 90 degrees to the vertical axis. Other areas of the trunk may provide stock blanks as well.
Edward King of ASI, well known for importing AYA guns, also supplies the trade with blanks. He notes three types of figuring commonly catalogued: root, burl and crotch. “The root tends to be the most prized and is found, as the name suggests, in the base of the tree – depending on the size and age of the tree, one would want to keep a section two feet below ground and a foot or so above. This will allow the stock to have the wonderful, tortuous figuring in the wider part and the straighter, stronger walnut in the hand, where the strength is crucial. The burl is effectively a ‘wart’ or growth on the outside of the tree and is very highly figured inside: the figuring often includes hundreds of tiny little knots. This kind of figuring is especially favoured by German and Austrian gunmakers, but stockers will rarely thank you for selecting it, as the knots have a habit of falling out during the stocking process and the holes need filling individually, which adds hugely to the work. The third type of figuring is ‘crotch’ and this is found where the trunk divides into two or where a substantial branch grows out of the trunk. Here, the figuring is more linear: [it] follows the direction of the branch; the stocker will generally fit it so that the lines of figuring curve down towards the toe of the stock. Crotch walnut may not always have the same amount of tortuous figuring that root or burl have, but it makes up for this in strength – making it ideal for self-opening actions, such as the Purdey-beesley.”
Trunks rest for a while after felling, then they are cleaned and planked. Spacers are used to separate the planks to allow air to flow. Unless kiln-dried, which is far less desirable, the planks are stored in barns and under tarpaulins until the moisture content settles and tensions in them are relieved. They are not seasoned in direct sunlight because it can cause rapid changes in moisture, leading to instability and cracking. Some walnut grown and seasoned in exceptionally dry climates can become so hard that it is difficult to work with hand tools.
Typically, once cut, the wood rests for a year per inch of plank thickness. When the moisture comes down to about 20%, it may be cut into blanks (usually created with the aid of a Perspex or metal stock template on the plank) and brought indoors with the ends of the blanks waxed to steady the drying process. Before it can be worked, however, it wants to have a moisture content of about 10% (the kind of level in an ordinary, well-heated home). The ideal blank will have good density and colour and show strength (straight grain) through what will become the grip. It will also have pleasing decorative figure to the butt area. Seasoning wood is a slow, steady process shrouded in mystery, and much depends on the expertise of those assessing the wood. Blanks may vary in price from about £200 for a very plain one to £2,000 for a splendidly figured ‘exhibition’ blank, with significant premiums paid for matching blanks for pairs of guns.