How to finish a stock?

[hometheaterman]

Anyone have any tips for finishing a stock? I ordered one but it comes unfinished. I want sort of a light finish as in not dark just more of a medium finish. Something sort of this color
Maybe just a hair lighter.


Most ones I've seen are more this color
but I don't think I want one that dark although I could do that.

I would kind of like it to be a little glossy but it doesn't have to be.

Any tips on what I should use and how to do it? Is staining it something I can do myself or should I take it somewhere? Some of the finishes I've seen on guns seems to come off easy where as my Browning the finish just doesn't seem to come off even if you accidentally get cleaning stuff on it. I want this thing to hold up.

Any tips on what to use and how to do it?

 

[ThrottleJockey]

Based on your questions, I would say you probably don't have quite the knowledge necessary to accomplish this task to your satisfaction. Take it somewhere. I personally would just go down to the home depot, buy the stain I like, buy some polyurethane, buy some various sandpaper grits, and go to work on my stock. Depending on what type of wood it is, you may not need to stain it to achieve the color you desire. Just some good oil and a lot of rubbing.

 

[jakk280rem]

I would say you probably don't have quite the knowledge necessary to accomplish this task to your satisfaction

this might be true, however he came too the right place to learn, and the fact that he asked before he started rather than posting a "i messed up, how do i fix it" type thread tells me he can figure it out.

Some of the finishes I've seen on guns seems to come off easy where as my Browning

browning uses a polurethane finish. it is very durable to solvents, but is very brittle. once cracked, gouged, or scratched it is very difficult to repair and offers very little protection to the wood. hand rubbed oil on the other hand are very durable, can be very easy to repair, but offer very little in the way of protection from solvents, dirt and oil, even fingerprints. they also take a very long time to apply. the best combo is a mix of the two. the oil penetrates giving a look and reparability of oil, the protection, and ease of application of poly.


birchwood casey's tru-oil is a decent product. it is a linseed oil polyurethane mix, and produces a nice, durable finish. they make a stock finishing kit with everything you need to finish a stock. go slow, have patience, take your time, follow the directions.

lick your finger and rub a small wet patch onto your rifle stock. this is about how dark the wood will come out after finishing. if that is too dark i dont know of a way to lighten a stock. if it is too light, you can use the walnut stain that comes in the kit, it's pretty dark, or you can use any water based stain from the home store.

 

[Smokey Joe]

Check out my thread...

Hometheatre man--I finished a Boyd's stock for my Yugo M-48, and wrote up the experience in the "Rifle Country" forum here. Check out the thread "Progress Report: My semi-Bubba'd pseudo-scout."

(Sending you there because it's a bit longish, rather than re-posting it here.)

 

[Poper]

What jakk280rem Said.

Plus I would add: Go slow. Learning as you go takes a lot of patience and willingness to make mistakes. We all make them, but we learn more from our mistakes than we do from our successes.
If you decide to go through with this, make it a point to enjoy the process. The end product will be well worth it.

Also, most replacement wood stocks from Boyd's and the like, require final fitting of the action and furniture to the stock. If you can find a copy, Jim Carmichael's "Do It Yourself Gunsmithing" would be a good resource. I am sure there are many others out there, too.

I hope this helps.

Poper

 

[ThrottleJockey]

Don't make the stock your first "practice" piece. Get a few scraps of wood(preferably the same type) and practice on them first, with sandpaper, then oil one, stain another......Read a book about finishing wood, the most important part is starting with a properly sanded, perfectly smooth surface. When you think it is sanded enough and smooth enough, sand it some more......

 

[dacavasi]

Don't EVER stain a piece of worthwhile wood!!! Use linseed oil (a traditional stock finish), poly, ANYTHING! But please don't ruin a perfectly fine piece of wood by staining it!!!

 

[hometheaterman]

Anyone have any tips for finishing a stock? I ordered one but it comes unfinished. I want sort of a light finish as in not dark just more of a medium finish. Something sort of this color
Maybe just a hair lighter.


Most ones I've seen are more this color
but I don't think I want one that dark although I could do that.

I would kind of like it to be a little glossy but it doesn't have to be.

Any tips on what I should use and how to do it? Is staining it something I can do myself or should I take it somewhere? Some of the finishes I've seen on guns seems to come off easy where as my Browning the finish just doesn't seem to come off even if you accidentally get cleaning stuff on it. I want this thing to hold up.

Any tips on what to use and how to do it?

 

[Dookie]

For stripping I prefer citristrip, non toxic and water soluble. After it has been stripped as far as I can take it I put it in the dishwasher and steam clean it. This will remove all impurities and will fix any dents in the wood.
After that I do minor sanding on whatever needs it, with a final sand of 600 grit. If you have an upholstery steamer use that liberally on the wood to raise any fibrous grain, if no steamer the shower on really high works good also.

I do not know what wood you are using, I will assume walnut. You should not need any stain for walnut unless it is a very light wood.

For finish I use Tru Oil. I buy a small bottle and empty half into another sealable container, mix it abut 50/50 with mineral spirits to thin it out. I then wash down the stock with alcohol, not JD. Then I put latex gloves on and start hand rubbing the thinned oil into the wood, do not use to much. It will take a few hours to dry. Put about 3 or four coats on like that until the wood is thoroughly saturated.

After you get the base coats done, mix the thinned oil with the unthined, and use that in the same way as the first coats. After the finish starts to get a sheen, use steel wool to even out the color and fix any imperfections.

Do not move on to the next coat of oil until the previous coats are dry. I use a screw in the butt stock and hang it to dry with that.

That first stock you have is gorgeous. It looks like a Savage, not the model 4, that was detachable magazine fed. I almost bought one just like that but with out the nice wood.

The second is a Remington. Correct? That is all I know about that.

A couple I did with this method.

 

[moooose102]

i have refinished a couple of stocks. i sanded them down to bare wood prior to finishing them, and left them in their natural color. one, i used marine spar varnish on. the other i used minwax polyurethane on. fortunatly / unfortunatly, neither had any checkering to deal with. that would present a problem (i can not imagine how you could sand between the lines). just remember to steel wool between coats, or you will have a rough finish.

 

[ReadyontheRight]

Then I put latex gloves on and start hand rubbing the thinned oil into the wood,

By "Hand Rubbing", do you use some sort of cloth? What kind of cloth do you use?

 

[.45Guy]

I usually start just slopping it on by hand sans cloth, rubbing it in until the pores are filled. Let it dry thoroughly, sand, and apply finishing coats with a soft cotton cloth. I usually use an old skivvie shirt.

 

[SP Shop Foreman]

This is a good one.
http://www.arizonaresponsesystems.com/notes/wood/pagewood.htm

Latigo

 

[Coltdriver]

I have done a few stocks too.

I sand the finish off rather than stripping it. Then I go to a 200 grit to get it smooth.

After that I wet the stock with water and let it dry to raise the wood. When its dry I sand it again with 200 grit.

I like to use tung oil but I use the minwax variety. I do not use stain. The minwax version of tung oil has some hardeners that will give you a tougher finish than true pure tung oil only.

A nice wet coat, brushed on, let it sit for five minutes, wipe it off, let it dry for 24 hours. Sand it with 200 grit. Get all the dust off. Repeat. If you search on .243 project and my user name you will see a Ruger #1 stock I did this with. Came out nice. High grade furniture nice.

Eventually, 10 to 15 coats of this, you will have filled in the wood. You can decide at this point if you want to go satin or gloss by how you leave the last few coats. Either wipe em off or leave em on.

For the last two or three coats I go to 400 grit.

The second rifle you show has been stained first. This is frequently done on production rifles because the wood is not uniform or of great quality. Sometimes you do find some fairly nice wood under the stain but nothing like the first rifle you posted.

I did do one rifle in marine grade spar varnish. It builds up very quickly, would only take three coats. The end finish was a high gloss. It looked nice but...it is tough and utilitarian and you will not get a high grade furniture finish out of it.

Let us know what you do. Remember if you really hate the outcome you can just sand it off and try again!

 

[krs]

Tru-Oil isn't polyeurothane. It's boiled linseed oil and varnish. They seem to make it heavier with the varnish than they used to. I just opened a new bottle - my old one was over thirty years and it had been so long since I used any that it had almost all hardened in there. The new stuff is drying much quicker than memory recalls.

Hand rubbed Boiled Linseed oil - gloss if you want, satin if you want, almost raw wood appearance if you want. Total control.

If you need to add color don't use Home Depot anything stains, or any oil or water based stains at all. Use spirit stains, or alcohol stains - I think they're two names for the same thing. Much much better control and the color won't seal the wood preventing any more changes to the tone of it.

Don't color fine wood, meaning good well grained walnut, except to maybe even an overly light area. If you don't use some color on Beech or Birch it'll look like baby poo when you're done.

 

[Myles]

I've always just used boiled linseed oil. Countless hours of fine sanding and prepwork, then alternating between rubbing oil into the wood, and polishing with extra fine steel wool.

My pride and joy is a hand-rubbed stock that has well over 80 hours of rubbing and polishing into it. The depth of grain is amazing, it has an almost illusory feel to the depths you can see into the wood.
EDIT: (Birch, by the way, and it hardly resembles baby-poo. It's a beautiful hard gloss blonde finish.)

Don't be in a hurry if you want a beautiful stock.

 

[hometheaterman]

Anyway this and my other thread can be merged? I didn't mean to post twice. I posted once and my internet crashed before it said it posted. It never went to that page so I thought it didn't post. I came back later after I got my internet back up and working and posted it again not knowing it had posted the first time. Sorry guys.

 

[hometheaterman]

Anyway this and my other thread can be merged? I didn't mean to post twice. I posted once and my internet crashed before it said it posted. It never went to that page so I thought it didn't post. I came back later after I got my internet back up and working and posted it again not knowing it had posted the first time. Sorry guys.

 

[hometheaterman]

Thanks for the tips so far guys. This stock doesn't have a finish on it so I'm hoping that will make things easier as I wont have to strip it.

 

[hometheaterman]

Thanks for the tips so far guys.

 

[jcwit]

Another good finish is Minwax Antique Oil finish, you use it just like Tru-Oil and it gives the same finish, however its Much less expensive.

Minwax also now has a stain labled gunstock.

Either of the above 2 products work great and if down the road you happen to scratch the stock they can be repaired much, much easier than if finished with varnish. Final finish can vary from satin to high gloss depending on how many coats are applied.

Good luck

 

[Dookie]

By "Hand Rubbing", do you use some sort of cloth? What kind of cloth do you use?

No cloth, although I did use cotton balls with good results.

 

[Restorer]

Hi...
I restore antique furniture and build new furniture for a living, and do some firearm furniture finishing as a hobby.

Here's what I do:
I agree with what has been said so far about sanding and raising the grain (wetting the wood with water after sanding, drying then re-sanding with 220 grit) with 2 caveats: go easy around the edges and detail work because it's easy to round over edges and lose detail and shadow lines. Also, after sanding but before wetting with water wash the piece with mineral spirits or lacquer thinner to remove any waxes or silicates that may have worked their way into the grain. Let it dry overnight then raise the grain.

As far as color goes, please yourself. A beautiful piece of wood can still be improved by judicious coloration. After sanding I wipe on a non-grain raising dye (dye suspended in a mixture of solvents) to even the color tones and control blotchiness. The dyes I use are Behlen's Solarlux, available at woodworker.com. They are made in about 20 colors...it looks like you are trying to get a light walnut or medium light walnut. If it's not the exact color you want, you can mix any of their colors to get the shade you want. There is a color chart on their page.http://woodworker.com/cgi-bin/FULLPRES.exe?PARTNUM=847-347&search=Behlen&smode=

Work quickly with this stuff because the solvents flash off fast and if an edge gets dry it can leave a streak in the color. With a piece as small as a rifle stock it's not a problem to apply quickly. Just soak a cloth and wipe it on (wear gloves or you'll be wearing that color for a month!). Solarlux has the benefit of accepting any topcoat, including oils. What I like to use is a product called Waterlox (http://woodworker.com/cgi-bin/FULLPRES.exe?PARTNUM=294-001&search=Waterlox&smode=). It is a polymerized tung oil, very durable and pretty. I also use this stuff to finish exterior doors and boat woodwork. One great thing about it is that you can apply extra coats through the years, or use it to touch up abrasions as needed. Use 2 coats of original sealer, then use either the regular satin or the gloss marine coating.

If you don't quite like the color after using the solarlux, you can tint the sealer with any oil-based stain, up to 10:1 ratio. The 2 types of coloration can complement each other because the dye goes into the wood pores while the stain sits on top of it.

Apply 3 coats of the Waterlox Marine coating, let it dry for a couple of days and apply a thin coat of paste wax for extra protection.

If I can get Photobucket to work for me I'll post some pics.