Plastic stocks

Hello, newbie here. I picked up a mid-fifties Red Ryder and got the Daisy bug.

The gun itself cocks & fires, but the plastic buttstock is as flat & twisted as a toothpaste tube. Needing a replacement, I sought to ID what I had (and why it warped so badly). No visible markings, so I filleted it with a Dremel into two mirror halves. This stock is a four-piece item: The stock body itself, (no markings), a false-hammer insert (no markings), a butt plate: logo MPC 2, and a trigger-spring mounted on a insert also marked MPC 2. Oddly, the plastic fore end is a crudely marked MPC 3. A logo search took me to Multiple Products Corp, a former maker of all things plastic, but no apparent ties to Daisy. A Forum search did not yield any clues. So, is this such an old topic that it is no longer discussed? Has anyone ever tackled the evolution of these plastic stocks? By the by, I learned more about warped plastics researching this buttstock than anyone needs to know--including a warning possibly relevant to Daisy collectors. Thanks for any input.

Thanks for the replies. I’ll post the pictures soon.

The keyword is Cellulose Acetate (CA). This was the newest plastic concoction in the late 1940s. It applied well to the new ‘injection molding’ process. By the mid-1950s problems started to arise. Modern forums covering vintage CA warping include model trains, model cars, Legos, even poker chips and playing cards. The chemical giant Bayer in Germany warned CA products should not be stored above 150-degrees?! In Mr. Dunathan’s book he mentions Daisy’s failure with “Fibron plastic”. [One Google result for Fibron was for a knife handle company…]. But on a 1950s poster for the Red Ryder, it pointed out a “Fiberon” forearm & stock as a new feature. [Again, this word was a dead end, either as a 1950’s brand, a material, or a company]. Maybe it was a proprietary formula for Daisy? As I mentioned in the prior post, my twisted stock had MPC logos, source unknown. CA was also used in ‘modern art’ objects. This is where the true nature of CA is revealed. Plastic preservation has had some serious money thrown at it at the museum level.

To summarize, their findings are that once warping, etc, has begun, you can neither stop, or repair it. At best, you can store it in a way to slow down the process. According to the experts, one of the biggest factors in CA’s demise is moisture (humidity). Worse, the gases released from CA were destructive to other materials stored with it. Specifically, it “corroded metals, and damaged fabrics”. One museum lists it as a ‘malignant plastic’. Another site says the best environment for CA items is in a “well-ventilated area, with the temperature below 68-degrees, and humidity controlled between 30-40%.

Thankfully the next step forward in plastic was polystyrene, which was stable, and could be molded in even finer detail--think: wood grain plastic stocks. I suspect Daisy caught on quickly, as did the model makers and other commercial enterprises. As an aside, there is a model maker who still uses CA (maybe a more modern version?) to cast model horses. From their website:

Breyer Models are made of Cellulose Acetate.  The composition of cellulose acetate will not allow it to be glued with everyday adhesives like Elmer’s glue, model cement, or Crazy glue.             For best results, it is recommended that you use acetone to repair your models.  This will soften the plastic and allow the broken pieces to actually bond together. 

They go on to say the consumer can straighten bent parts of the model with the heat from a hair dryer.

The reason I posted this info is because I could not find any other information on plastic stocks.

I found the possibility of further damage alarming. Number 1, there are no replica plastic stocks; so what is out there is all that there will ever be. Number 2, I’ve seen some beautiful, seemingly undamaged BB guns with CA stocks at sale or auction. I presume they were either well-cared for, or luckily well-stored all these years. BUT, if the new owner is not aware of the proper care needed, these stocks too, in their new environment, may warp into oblivion.

I am new to this Daisy stuff, but I would hope to preserve the remaining plastic-stock Daisy’s to be there for the next generation of collectors. Thanks guys.