Third Party Press

Letter "P" and letter "K" marking on K98k stocks

Hautleim belong to the Glutin glue group and Glutin glues are originally not water-and weatherproof. By adding casein, Glutin glues can also be made waterproof and it's possible they have used it.
 
Could explain the susceptibility to delamination that Czech stocks seem to have. While certainly not the “best”, hide glues are still viable, I’ve done some weather testing on bonds with beech wood and hide glue and after weeks of sitting outside through rain etc, the wood fails way before the glue bond in my experience. Of course this test wasn’t very scientific by any means and the duration wasn’t very long but still interesting any way. Just brainstorming but there might be a possibility that Hautleim was a later war expediency of sorts as I did read some documents mentioning glue shortages, curious if you may have come across something similar?
 
Yesterday I had already announced that I discovered something important. I have to admit that I was wrong in my first post with Kaseinleim and Phenol-Formaldehydharzleim. With the type of glue I was wrong, but luckily the new information still suport my theory with the meaning of the letter "K" and "P". Now we even have period evidence.

The answer I could find in the book "Tempered woods and wood-like construction and materials - Definition and markings" written in 1942 by Prof. Dr. Ing. F. Kollmann (Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg GmbH).

Here is the relevant excerpt: View attachment 204138 You can see, the Kaseinleim is abbreviated with the letter "C". The letter "K" stands for Kauritleim and the letter "P" stands for Pressalleim. Pressalleim belongs to the same group like Kauritleim and is a synthetic resin glue. The "Pressal" is a melamine resin glue mixed with additives for the wet-proof gluing of plywood and was manufactured by Henkel & Cie. GmbH in Düsseldorf.

I have to correct my previous comment.

The stamped "K" stands for "Kaurit" and the "P" for "Phenolformaldehyd". During my research I could find out the Kaseinleim (casein-glue) wasn't used, they have used Kaurit. Pressalleim also wasn't used and the abbreviation from the book "Tempered woods and wood-like construction and materials - Definition and markings" wasn't used before 1942. In the relevant time period they have used another glue type which contained Phenolformaldehyd, therefore the "P" marking.

If somebody has a rifle with early laminate stock (1937/1938) with "K" marking, this data is very important. It would be nice to get more stock completion date and laminate suppliers.
 

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