SpudFiles

I haven't seen much on stocks, grips or custom handles etc on spudguns, seeming they often get left with a plain blowgun or a polymorph grip- very comfortable, but not really that nice on the eyes.

I'm going to have to say that I've spent most of the last couple days (my free time, at least) trying to carve nice stocks from everything pine to jarrah. Having zero woodworking experience (I lie, I did make a little car in year 8) it took a bit, but I managed to pick up basic skills like varnishing, waxing, chiseling and the likes.

Now I can reliably produce nice looking stocks reliably in most of the materials I try (whitegum I have is full of knots, so a bit tricky) which actually turn out to be comfortable and ergonomic.

The problem being, I can't get a nice inlay for the blowgun no-matter how hard I try. I've tried cutting the grip in half, chiseling parts out, drilling and chiseling.. But for the life of me it just wont work.

I believe this is a problem most people trying to make stocks will have problems with, so any thoughts or discussion?

Tl;dr:

Making inlays for actions etc.
General stock/grip/whatever discussion.

I find it's not too hard to cut a notch out of a short length of 1" PVC and slide the blowgun inside, after you hacksaw off the blowgun's hang-up hook. If you have some way of doing that and then drilling a hole to put the pipe inside the stock then that could work well.

You can cut the blowgun down, cast bondo or some sort of resin into a block around making sure the ports are clear and then carve a space for a block inside he wood.

I use a router bit in a drill then cleaned it up with a knife and file for my stocks

jamie e wrote:I use a router bit in a drill then cleaned it up with a knife and file for my stocks

dam that must be hard,its like using a hole saw without a pilot drill bit

woops

I kept persevering...

And got nowhere. After all of my efforts, I cannot possible seem to integrate the blowgun into the design I want, it's just not feasible.

Opinions for a more compact option?

It only needs to vent, 1/4" npt (or smaller).

I'm not sure, perhaps a very small ball valve which I can modify the handle on.

Porting size doesn't matter too much, as it's venting a QEV.