Refinishing a wood stock

I used 150 grit for the initial work. I wetted and dewhiskered twice, switching to 220 grit.
I did 3 coats of linseed oil over a three day period. For the first two, I used a rag soaked with BLO, the last day I used the hand method. I did no buffing or shining of the final coat.

This was my first attempt at refinishing. I'm very happy with the results, and grateful for the advice given on this thread.
 
I think that look really suits some rifles like german mausers, VZ24's etc but not so much on others like mosin nagants and swede mausers.

Great job BTW.
 
More Oil !

More oil , three coats doesn't come close to sealing the wood from the weather . I can tell this because of the flatness of the finish . When the grain is sealed it will start to shine . You can knock the shine off in several ways , with steel wool being the most popular . Looks great so far !
 
this thread started with a 98k with a walnut stock i have a 98k with the laminate stock i want to refinish. i stained it with dark walnut stain but it doesnt get dark enough for my taste. does anybody know of any tips or tricks to refinishing a laminate stock as opposed of a natural wood one?
 
Otto, I've never tried to refinish a laminate stock, but if I was going to try it I'd probably use Trans-Tint concentrated dye in Dark Walnut. You can order it from Rockler or Woodcraft, and you can mix it with water or alcohol to whatever strength you want. I've used it with water and with alcohol and I prefer the use with water (distilled water). After all the sanding and grain raising/dewhiskering is done, apply the stain to get the darkness you want, and once the wood is dry, then you can apply the finish. If you are going to use a varnish, you don't need the wood sanded any finer than 220 grit. If you're going to use the Boiled Linseed Oil, I'd sand and grain-raise to 400 grit before I applied the stain. I do wonder how well a laminate stock will accept stain evenly. I'm thinking that the various layers of wood will probably each accept stain differently. Maybe someone else on the forum has experience with that.

Mix the stain with the distilled water and try it out on small hidden spot on the stock so that you can find the darkness you want.

And the OP's stock, which looks fine, could be smoother and shinier if he wet-sanded (with Linseed Oil) to finer grits like 320 and then 400 and then maybe 600 if that's what he wants. That'll put a paste of fine dust and oil into the wood pores and smooth out the appearance of the wood. Hand rubbing daily after that will add more shine. An old book I have (from the 1930's) suggests that hand rubbing should be done daily for no less than 90 days for best appearance. And back in the day they'd use real sharkskin and Rottenstone and oil to fill the pores prior to getting to the hand rubbing part. Personally, I've never gone to those extremes, though I have considered it (not the sharkskin). If I had just the right walnut stock, I'd probably have a go. I wouldn't work that hard on mediocre walnut.
 
oneoldsap is dead on. Your stock is not sealed yet. As he so eloquently put it " MORE OIL "! Your stock is sealed when it looks smooth, with little or no surface texture from the wood grain. If it is too shiny for you hit it with 4/0 steel wool and a final coat of Johnsons PASTE floor wax. Tru-oil is my choice for an oil finish. Don't forget the places you don't see like the barrel channel, under the butt plate, anywhere moisture can get in.
 
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Just because the surface of the wood isn't completely smooth doesn't mean that the oil hasn't penetrated enough to seal the wood. For instance, if you took an open grained wood gunstock (Walnut has some open grain, but isn't real bad about it) and put it in an oil bath for 2 weeks, to let the maximum amount of oil penetrate the wood, and then let the oil dry (would take probably a month to dry completely), the wood would be effectively sealed, but the open grain would still show. Just the oil penetration would not smooth the wood out. That's where the wet sanding with the fine grit comes in. You fill the holes slowly with the oil/wood dust mixture until the surface is smooth. Both ways are effectively and equally sealed against moisture penetration, though the smooth wood is much prettier.

Linseed oil, as good as it is, will not prevent some water absorption by the wood. That's why you should occasionally put a few drops of oil on your hands and work it into the stock.
 
The stock on my K98 is laminated. When I sanded, I did so just to dewhisker the grain and took off very little of the surface.

On the first coat of BLO, I could tell it was penetrating a little. The second coat didn't really soak in much at all, so I figured that a final hand-ribbed coat was all that was needed.
If 60 years of use and storage only raised the grain as much as it was, then I think I should be good for another 60 at least. (if I live to 100.)

I'll hit it periodically with some more BLO and see how it holds up.
 
OK, I'll try that on my shotgun stock, which I'm doing next.

The Swede is going to get re-assembled this weekend, (after 5 applications)then I'm doing my Rem 870. Which will get extra coats, since it's my upland gun and gets alot of wet, snowy, soggy use.

At this rate I'll have all my wood stocks refinished by the time I stop:eek:
 
I used acetone with 0000 steel wool then Formby's Tung Oil which is really a varnish. I sand with 0000 steel wool, blow the dust off with an air compressor and apply 6 to 8 coats. I sand between each coat with 0000 steel wool. I like High Gloss but also comes in semi gloss and satin. Excellent product. Tim
 
:) Hope you wore gloves, Tim

Steel wool will leave little bits of steel in the grain- I just proved it again (as if I needed to do it yet again :rolleyes: ) today. Even lightly rubbing a black walnut stock with 0000 steel wool left bits, and I changed the steel wool often. All I wanted to do was remove some type of varnish-like finish from an old stock to prep for a BLO finish, and was using odorless mineral spirits. Two hours and I'm only half done...

Anyway, I reverted back to my old stand-by: very fine scotchbrite. I'll be getting a needle and a magnifying glass to pick out a few bits of steel wool tomorrow morning.

To each his own but I won't try steel wool ever again
 
Tack Cloth

Wipe with a Tack cloth after rubbing with steel wool , and after sanding ! The problem with the scotch pads is , they scratch like crazy .
 
:) Respectfully, that may be your experience but it is not mine; I have no alternative but to presume that you're scratching something on top of the wood.

I find no scratches in American walnut after using scotchbrite, with or without a lubricant such as boiled linseed oil or mineral spirits, or when dry. I've spent the morning doing this, dry. I have no special technique, although maybe I have an advantage because I was trained to do bodywork in a pro shop when I was a kid, and I'm good at it; I know when to stop and when to not stop, if you take my meaning. I rub by hand in circular patterns, with fairly light pressure. I don't 'scrub' the wood. I use very fine scotchbrite. It takes some time but I like the results.

On the previous page is a Walnut stock that I finished by sanding 150 grit down to 600 grit, then with Very Fine Scotchbrite, then with a few dozen coats of boiled linseed oil. You will note no scratches. Here is a photo of the stock I've worked over the last two days with scotchbrite; this morning I used it dry. No scratches. Here's a close-up photo of the results. I'm oiling in about 15 minutes.

smooth.jpg
 
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If a fella goes through the sandpaper grits, say 150 to 220 to 320 to 400 to 600, and at each grit he makes sure that scratches from the previous grit are removed, by the time he gets finished at 600 grit there aren't any visible scratches. Any finer grit than that is probably wasted if he's working walnut. Certainly you can go finer than that, and if you are wet sanding, the dust/oil will go into the pores of the wood and eventually close them up. You could also accomplish that with 400 or 600 grit. The trick is to not pull the dust/oil mix out of the pores when you wipe off the excess oil.

As for which oil to use, in the past I used Boiled Linseed Oil. Nowadays I'll usually grab the can of Minwax Antique Oil. It's similar to tung oils and danish oils, in that they are a mix of Mineral Spirits, BLO, and varnish, though the percentages of each vary by brand. You don't even need to buy a can if you have all 3 of the ingredients mentioned. You can mix up your own, and you can get the recipes off the internet. None of these will be waterproof, but they will be water resistant. I use the Antique Oil because a fellow I know that taught woodworking for 35 years said that he always thought that Antique Oil gave the best finish. That was good enough info for me. Is it the best? Heck, I don't know, but I do like using it. It's faster than doing the stock in BLO and it gives a nice soft satin look finish (which probably all of the wiping varnishes/tung oil/danish oil will give). And you can wet sand with it. The more coats, the more shine. The first coat looks terrible. Second coat looks good, and successive coats look even better. Not much point in going past 5 coats or so.
 
If a fella goes through the sandpaper grits, say 150 to 220 to 320 to 400 to 600, and at each grit he makes sure that scratches from the previous grit are removed, by the time he gets finished at 600 grit there aren't any visible scratches.
Click to expand...

If this is in response to my technique and use of scotchbrite, I must emphatically assert that I didn't sand this one shown on this page. At all. I stated that the photo on the previous page showed a stock in which I employed sandpaper before scotchbrite. The lack of scratches in the photo on this page has nothing to do with sandpaper grit on this stock as none was used.
 
ChrisB, I wasn't commenting on your use of scotchbrite but was only pointing out that an extremely smooth wood surface can be reached with regular sandpaper. Going past a 600 grit with something even less abrasive is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, though probably 600 grit would be enough for most folks. At 600 grit I think we've hit the level where we are polishing as much as abrading. When I'm sanding things on the wood lathe, when I get to 600 I start to see the wood beginning to actually shine.

Regarding the use by some folks of steel wool, I rarely would use that on bare wood, though if a water based finish isn't used, the steel wool shouldn't cause any problems, particularly if a tack cloth is used to remove the remaining bits of the steel wool.
 
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