silicosys4
Member
- Joined
- Jun 29, 2012
- Messages
- 3,667
Ok, so I've spent the last week or so working on the stock. I decided there was enough figure showing to go ahead and spend the time to uncover what was there. I put probably 15 coats of boiled linseed oil mixed 70/30 with mineral spirits, wet sanding with fine steel wool after each coat. This slurry of oil and wood dust helped fill in the small cracks, pores, and splits that had occurred over time without knocking too much material off the surface. Fine steel wool isn't that abrasive so it was a time consuming process to get down to clean wood, but I had time to make sure I wasn't taking more off than I was comfortable with. I left a lot of the character of the wood... the bruises, scratches, and marks earned over time are still there.
Once I had the wood smooth and relatively clean, I hand rubbed another 10 or so coats of boiled linseed oil into the wood until it wouldn't readily take any more, letting it completely dry between coats.
There was a lot of figure and character hidden under all that crud. Some of the oil soaked wood stayed dark. I started looking into ways to remedy that, but it started to sound like a lot of work and I decided that I liked the character of the dark wood more than the work of getting the oil out.
As a few posters have said, I'll be looking for some wax to seal it up and shine it up a bit.
Its kind of neat that this grade of wood would be a custom addition to a high dollar rifle, but this was probably considered low to mid grade wood back then.
The forend was pretty beat up, there wasn't a lot I could do to bring it back without removing a substantial amount of material. I cleaned it up a bit but it didn't reap near the rewards as the stock did.
And thanks to Tark and his generous donation of some 32-20 brass, I can take some time off tomorrow and test out that bore some more!
Thanks for looking
Once I had the wood smooth and relatively clean, I hand rubbed another 10 or so coats of boiled linseed oil into the wood until it wouldn't readily take any more, letting it completely dry between coats.
There was a lot of figure and character hidden under all that crud. Some of the oil soaked wood stayed dark. I started looking into ways to remedy that, but it started to sound like a lot of work and I decided that I liked the character of the dark wood more than the work of getting the oil out.
As a few posters have said, I'll be looking for some wax to seal it up and shine it up a bit.
Its kind of neat that this grade of wood would be a custom addition to a high dollar rifle, but this was probably considered low to mid grade wood back then.
The forend was pretty beat up, there wasn't a lot I could do to bring it back without removing a substantial amount of material. I cleaned it up a bit but it didn't reap near the rewards as the stock did.
And thanks to Tark and his generous donation of some 32-20 brass, I can take some time off tomorrow and test out that bore some more!
Thanks for looking
