Best wood stock oil/preservative on military surplus walnut stocks?

BLO, Tru-Oil, or others. I prefer BLO.

BLO if you want the traditional look.

Boiled Linseed Oil

BLO; just hand rub on a very thin coat. If there is still any oil sitting on the surface after a half hour or so, either wipe off the excess or rub again to redistribute to areas where the oil was absorbed more quickly. Too much BLO sitting on the surface will not dry well and will remain tacky for far too long.

Rub BLO on and let it saturate then wait 15 min then rub off excess and let dry a day or two. Repeat till it looks real nice. Then johnson paste wax. Rub on let dry and then rub off and buff to a shine. Couple coats of that and you are set.

I like to use BLO cut 50/50 with turpentine. The turp helps to remove grease and crud, and helps the oil soak in better.

Tom's 1/3 Military Stock wax is a good top coat. It's 1/3 each beeswax, tung oil and turpentine, so adding more oil to the stock will cut right through it, it doesn't seal the surface like varnish or paste wax. When dry, just put more Tom's on.

SpeedSeed was an old go-to. Premixed BLO, tung, and turps.
Haven't seen any in many a year.

BLO, Once a day for a week,, Once a week for a month,, Once a month for a year,, Once a year for Life.

Good Shooting

Lindy

Most oil finishes are dead fake synthetic oils other than tung oil.
With no saving grace except for indoor furniture, that has complete protection from the elements
The chemistry make up of wood oils is what wood needs, a true preservative.
On most woods it acts like a fountain of youth, closing most weather cracks & split ends.
The wood oils of pine tar, birch tar oils, even cedrol from Mexican juniper trees. Are full of the terrapins, the good parts of wood oils.
All essential oils are expensive & used mostly by perfume makers for scent carriers. Except for pine tar which is cheap & plentiful, where the good stuff is still being exported by the Swedes.
Remember pine tar oils come in amber colors same as sweet birch oils.
The soot is carbon black from the fires that created it the amber color is where the soot has been screened & filtered out.

I only use tung oil on my M1A and milsurps.

Doing inventory for jr high shop in 1965 I spilled some linseed oil. That stunk so bad I can still smell it.
25 year ago I was buying SeaFin in 5 gallon cans.
That is Tung oil with some extra polymers added, they tell me.
I used it indoors. What a mistake!

Has anyone shown you a gun he built, you shoulder it, look through the sights, and the it hits you. You have touched your face to some kind stinky toxic finish?
You wash your face and only half the stink comes off?

I have had enough stink.
I now do what one would do for a salad bowl; mineral oil covered with beeswax.
A finish without stink or poison.

I like the look of hand rubbed Tung Oil finish.

Bexar said:

I've got a Garand Walnut stock of my Daughter's Danish CMP Garand and would like to prevent it from drying out or cracking. I've used Liquid Gold; however do y'all have a better suggestion? Can't soak it in anything because it has the Danish stock decal inside the main stock. Thanks...Bexar

Click to expand...

Johnson's paste wax.

Jeff

Personally, I use BLO primarily because a lot of my milsurps are British or American. Have some tru-oil, tung oil, and some custom oil based stains, etc. that I have used an a case by case basis.

I will soon be experimenting and practising with the DeanDallas pine tar method as he has adeptly explained in other postings on two old dried out Swedish Mauser 38 stocks that had chipped buttstocks, etc. that I have fixed.

BTW, for those looking for a gentle stripper of cruddy finishes such as poly or varnish, try Soygel. It is gentle on the wood, soybean oil based, and low toxicity. It is slow however but has little if no toxicity and no odor. Rockler and others have carried it in the past or you could buy it direct.