An ebony forend tip is a traditional part of a custom rifle. Hi, I'm Larry
Potterfield with MidwayUSA, let me show you how to put one on. The ebony forend
tip is strictly for appearance and doesn't play a functional role in the
rifle. My preference for forend tips is about one and three-quarter inches in
length with a ninety-degree angle to the top of the forend. While most forend
tips start out as an ebony block, such as this. I'll make mine from this piece of
ebony that I brought back from Africa. The first step is to rough out a block
on the bandsaw just a bit larger than our forend tip. Once that's complete
abelt sander is used to square everything up. Since I want a four in that is nine
and a half inches in length, including the forend tip, I'll mark this one at
seven and three-quarter inches and using the bandsaw
shorten it. I'm using the belt sander to square it up. A pair of 3/8" walnut
dowels are used to hold the tip in place. Although, 1/4" dowels would
be fine as well. To mark their locations I start by making center lines both
horizontally and vertically on the forend tip
and mark a hole in the center of each half about 3/8 inch from the centerline.
Now I can drill out the holes using a hand drill. Each hole should be about a
half-inch deep. A pair of dial and tenon centers are then placed in the holes and
with the stock secured to the bench, along with a spacer, the face of the
ebony block is pressed against them. Using a mallet I hit the back of the
block sharply which precisely transfers the hole locations so that I can drill
them out. Since the dowels are fairly tight-fitting it's best to use pliers to
groove them to let the air out when gluing everything together.
All that's left is to fill the dowel holes with wood glue being sure to coat
the contact surfaces and dowels. A clamp is used to hold everything together. Once
the stock is set for 24 hours, we can remove the clamp and inspect the joint.
That looks pretty good. I'm marking the tip and using a band saw to remove most
of the excess material.
Now we can start shaping. I'm using a Nicholson 49 rasp and a straight edge to
file a flat on the bottom of the tip.
Once it's completely flat I can file additional flats on each side of the tip.
Now that I have three flats total I can start knocking off the edges.
After which I have a handful of corners,
which I file using a mill bastard file until the tip is round and blended with
the forend.
The barrel channel is next. I'm using a round rasp to rough it in and the barrel
bedding tool to scrape away the remaining material. Now we're ready to
begin rounding the tip. This is just a matter of turning a square into a circle
using some simple math. The forend tip measures one point three inches in
diameter. So I've marked the line half that diameter down the tip. This will
allow us to turn the end of the tip into half a sphere like this.
I've calculated a line representing my first cut.
I remove the material between these lines
we'll begin to follow the shape of a ball. A #49 rasp is used to remove
the material by filing a series of flats and then connecting those flats by
knocking off the corners.
It's important to be careful around the top rails as they're quite delicate. Now
I have one flat all around the forend tip. You can see it's starting to take
shape. Using a bit more math we can calculate these four lines. We'll file
flats between the lower two lines and the upper two lines.
Now we're almost there.
Some coarse sandpaper and a wooden backer is used to blend everything together.
Just about perfect.