BCRider
Member
Long time wood worker here that has to deal with a lot of finish materials as a result. A few pointers for next time.
First off you simply did not need to buy and fill a tub with 4 gallons of mineral spirits. A single gallon would be MORE than enough. The idea is to use a couple of cups worth and a rag to soak on and then wipe off. Then pour off the contaminated MS into a jar for recycling. Use another couple of cups worth for a second soaking and wipe down and once it's as dark as it's going to get pour THAT MS off into the recycle jar. Repeat until the MS doesn't have a distinctly brown or tea like look to it and you'll likely have gotten the lion's share of the surface cosmo off the wood. Getting to that point should not even need a gallon of MS. More like a half gallon in fact.
The problem with your MS "bath" is that the first cosmo to leech out is now in the bath solvent. So there's only so much you can do to clean the surface of the wood. So really small amounts switched out when the previous batch won't get darker is better than a 4 gallon "bath".
The steam trick is a good one. But your desire to avoid water in the wood just went up the chimney with the steam. NOTHING drives moisture back into wood like exposing it to steam. The good news is that your concerns over warping the stock due to exposure to water is unfounded. It would be a highly poor piece of wood on a gun if it warped badly at the first sight of water and didn't fully straighten when again dry.
The combination of steam then a warm iron applied to rags/towels over the wood is a good combination to sweat out the cosmoline. You likely had success with the Formby being able to dry because of this technique. It's hard to get that deeply soaked in cosmo out well enough to let a lot of modern finishes actually dry/polymerize correctly. So it would seem that you did well on that count.
And finally congrats on a satisfying re-finish process. Technique aside the stock looks great and you've learned a good amount of wood finishing handicraft.
First off you simply did not need to buy and fill a tub with 4 gallons of mineral spirits. A single gallon would be MORE than enough. The idea is to use a couple of cups worth and a rag to soak on and then wipe off. Then pour off the contaminated MS into a jar for recycling. Use another couple of cups worth for a second soaking and wipe down and once it's as dark as it's going to get pour THAT MS off into the recycle jar. Repeat until the MS doesn't have a distinctly brown or tea like look to it and you'll likely have gotten the lion's share of the surface cosmo off the wood. Getting to that point should not even need a gallon of MS. More like a half gallon in fact.
The problem with your MS "bath" is that the first cosmo to leech out is now in the bath solvent. So there's only so much you can do to clean the surface of the wood. So really small amounts switched out when the previous batch won't get darker is better than a 4 gallon "bath".
The steam trick is a good one. But your desire to avoid water in the wood just went up the chimney with the steam. NOTHING drives moisture back into wood like exposing it to steam. The good news is that your concerns over warping the stock due to exposure to water is unfounded. It would be a highly poor piece of wood on a gun if it warped badly at the first sight of water and didn't fully straighten when again dry.
The combination of steam then a warm iron applied to rags/towels over the wood is a good combination to sweat out the cosmoline. You likely had success with the Formby being able to dry because of this technique. It's hard to get that deeply soaked in cosmo out well enough to let a lot of modern finishes actually dry/polymerize correctly. So it would seem that you did well on that count.
And finally congrats on a satisfying re-finish process. Technique aside the stock looks great and you've learned a good amount of wood finishing handicraft.
