Shining up wooden stocks.

[Beak50]

What would you experienced guy's use to "shine"up a nice wooden stocked M-48 yugo to make it waterproof and gloss finished?

 

[Mudinyeri]

I don't know about waterproof but I use Orange Glo to cover up nicks and dings and give wood stocks a bit of a "glo".

 

[Zeke/PA]

I would coat the stock with a very light ( hand appiled/rubbed) coat of BOILED Linseed Oil.

 

[Black Butte]

Howard's Feed N Wax:

http://www.amazon.com/Howard-FW0016-Feed-N-Wax-Conditioner-16-Ounces/dp/B001BKQYGW

 

[Beak50]

Would a Car wax or something of the like work? Thanks for the replies

 

[Kingcreek]

Fidde's hard wax oil and buff with burlap (free burlap bags from the local coffee roaster).

 

[Bubbles]

We use Arrow Wood finish. It takes a while to do properly, but the results are well worth it.

 

[sage5907]

Zeke has the answer. Every year after hunting season I rub my gunstocks with a light coat of boiled linseed oil. The brand I have is Hoppe's and it comes in a small bottle. Put a small amount in the palm of your hand and rub it into the stock. The ideas is to rub a small amount on and keep rubbing until you rub it all off. The stock will pick up a good shine and the pores will be filled. BW

 

[Lucifer_Sam]

BLO and wax would both work fine. If you want to use a car wax I'd think you'd want to get something like a pure carnauba wax, though it is possible some of the car waxes with the additives would work fine.

 

[LJ-MosinFreak-Buck]

I've used Old English Wood Polish/Cleaner to good effect.

 

[Beak50]

Thanks guy's I'm gonna try the BLO and carnauba wax.I had my 7 mag done by someone else and he told me to use car polish on it but it is a shiny stock.The same guy told me not to use oil on a mauser he did for me to."Both years ago"while I could still work and had the $ to pay someone.Would the BLO mess up the wood in any way?I am totally new to wood working of any type and don't want to mess up a absolutely beautiful stock.Just make it nice and shiny.Thank's for your replies.Jim

 

[jaguarxk120]

At the top of the forum is a sticky about finishing gun stocks, good reading.

 

[Lucifer_Sam]

No, BlO wont cause any problems as long as its applied properly. Its about as conservative of an approach as you can have. Wax can cause problems if it gets into cracks and crevices and isnt cleaned out or buffed while its still pliable. Well, not really problems, it just dries, is kind of hard to get out, and doesnt look very good.

 

[788Ham]

Use very light coats of BLO, 4 or 5 coats, let dry for a couple of days between coats real good. Then get yourself a burlap bag, cut a small hunk off and buff the tar out of it, bet you'll be surprised at the finish.

 

[DoubleMag]

has anyone ever tried guitar polish? Amways Buff Up was a fav of a local gunshop, he said it didn't have any water or was low amount of water

 

[Bmac1949]

make sure that you get all the oil and solvent off of it first. you can use anything from oven cleaner to hot soap and water and then give it a light rubdown with 400 grit sand paper before you apply the finish. if you give it multiple coats make sure that the oil is good and dry before applying the next coat.

 

[Bmac1949]

Doublemag if you wax your stock the guitar polish will remove the wax and I don't think guitar polish is all that durable like wax. Wax and polish buildup is the enemy of guitars because it affects the sound quality while wax buildup on a gun stock forms a protective barrier.

 

[DoubleMag]

never thought of that, I just know musicians who use Gibsons exclusively on guitars and I didn't think of being outside either

 

[Rail Driver]

I'm sure someone will have a reason why my way is wrong, but I've personally had good luck with finishing wood (gun stocks and grips) by stripping it down to bare wood, sanding with successively finer grits up to 1200 grit, polishing it like metal... It gets the wood SUPER smooth, brings out the grain, and makes the lighter parts of the wood catch the light so it almost glows. After sanding, I use Minwax Spar Urethane (outdoor rated stuff) applied in very thin coats, sanded lightly with 400 grit in between coats. I usually do 4-5 thin coats. I'll have pictures of my Mosin/Nagant M44 once I finish (waiting on the 2nd coat to dry now, so maybe 2 more days).

An oil rubbed finish would look much better than the polyurethane, in my opinion, but I don't have the free time for it as it's a bit more time consuming than simple poly finish.

 

[madcratebuilder]

The Yugo wood can be a bit rough. I would use a 50/50 mix of BLO and Turpentine with some 0000 steel wool to clean and smooth the wood. Then two coats of BLO about 24-36 hrs apart. Follow up with some Tom's military gunstock wax. It's the best you can use on mil-surps.

http://thegunstockdoctor.com/Products.html

Here's my Yugo Elm stock with BLO and Tom's, no sanding was done to this wood.




Here's a 80+ year old M1924 stock that was very nasty when I received it. Same treatment as above.