Chronos wrote:I've made a few laminated blocks for jobs at home and when i was working as a mast builder for a shipwright. give all the surfaces a light sane and a wipe with accetone to help remove any dust, oils and waxes
You want to use an epoxy, i have used polyester resin but the epoxy will be harder and less flexible. the boatcote products are reasonably priced and high quality.
http://boatcraft.com.au/Shop/index.php? ... x&cPath=15If you want to do it right first time i'd recommend building a fixture out of steel RHS or hardwood beams if you have it, cover it with kitchen baking paper, lay your ply down, brush on the mixed epoxy on both pieces and start laying it up. scrape off any excess and put another layer of paper on top. (the paper will stop the stock blank gluing itself to the fixture) you won't need much epoxy and most have a long working time. you can predrill some dowel holes if it has to go together perfectly but if you are just going to cut it down it won't matter, too much resin and the layers will float and misalign so go slowly
then clamp your top beam on and wipe any resin that comes out. leave it for double the product cure time and then break the fixture down and trim it all up square with either a table saw or planer/thicknesser then you can mark it all out from nice straight edges
good luck with it, it's a project i've had in the back of my mind for a while as well.
I'm sure Trekin can add something here as he's made a few stocks on his piece of home made wizardry
Chronos
Edit: forgot to mention Boatcote also do cloths than can be put between the layers if added stiffness is required and filler powders that can be added to the same resin to make sandable filers for filling holes even bedding if it was just a rimfire
Thanks Chronos, the only thing I'd like to add is that the trend these days is to use polyurethane glues for laminated timber stocks. The glue I use is Sikabond® TechGrip by Sika®. I also use two small (12 tonne) workshop presses, run up to 5-6 tonnes, to clamp the workpieces together, this pressure, along with what can only be described as a micro foaming action of the Techgrip drives the glue very deep into the pieces being laminated. Mind you, this micro foaming can be disconcerting the fist time you see it in action, spread glue on pieces, clamp, wipe away excess, come back 10 minutes later and see this;
I would also like to add (at the risk of doing myself out of some business), for those contemplating making their own stocks from ply, use 6 MM max thick pieces, the veneers in 6MM ply are not much thicker than 1.5 MM, any thicker and the veneers crack and break out when pressed flat in the laminating process (GlueLam structural beams are bad for this). This can cause voids and areas that don't get bonded, neither of which are any good for maintaining the strength needed for stocks, at least for rifles chambered above rimfire. These voids and cracks also make it impossible to cut/machine clean edges:
Having said that, GlueLam beams are good for making templates, and then sending the template to me to be duplicated in a more suitable material.
For those that are interested this is the above stock when machined from ply with 1.5 MM veneers;
To see the fully finished stock you will need to go to that other forum site to view.