Posted by David W on January 30, 2007, 6:48 am, in reply to "Fore end needed"
Mike, can't help you with the wood. For you to find a forend wood for this gun, well, almost like the preverbal "needle in a haystack". Finding any forend wood is hard enough. As far as the top screws, one would be a oval head machine screw because the Ideal Grade would have had a roller release on it, and the screw going to the escutcheon was a machine screw. The other screw is an oval head wood screw #8x1/2". The end screws can still be found at gunworks.com, part #55. Unfortunately as this time they are out of them. Some of the early ones were longer (3/4"?) and had wood threads that actually held the forend metal onto the wood. The newer ones are shorter and only have a machine screw and then a turned shank that acts as a plug to go into the wood. If you go down to Photos of L.C. Smith screws you will get the dimensions and sizes of the screws. These were taken from an Ideal Grade also. Gunworks.com also states that they have the wood screws for the top of the forend, but they are for a field grade and of the Marlin era, becasue they are a flat head not an oval head and are phillips head not slotted.