Mosin-Marauder said:
I'll take that as a sign I need to stop.
No, take it as a sign that you need to continue ... learning. Don't hang out here in the "General Discussion" area, hang out in the gunsmithing area. Find some forums dedicated to gunsmithing and read up on finishing/refinishing stocks.
It doesn't matter whether or not you're making a living wage from it. Once you start charging money, it's a business and not a hobby. Charging money for it makes it your profession, and your customers/clients are then entitled to professional workmanship and professional results.
I don't know where they came from, but when I was in high school the wood shop had a huge box full of unfinished rifle buttstocks. Anybody who wanted to make a lamp was allowed to grab one, make a nice base for it, and put the whole thing together. Poke around. Find yourself a copy of Shotgun News. There are a lot of vendors of replacement stocks in that publication. Contact them all, tell them what you're trying to do, and ask them if they have any rejects they could send you for the cost of shipping. That would give you some materials for practice.
Since you're interested in REfinishing, as has already been noted -- wood is wood. Hit some tag sales and buy a couple of ratty pieces of furniture to practice on. Just be sure you're getting pieces that are real wood, not particle board with a thin veneer of wood (or even plastic).
Most gunstocks, traditionally, were Walnut. (I think that's a safe generalization.) Some lower-end firearms had Maple stocks. Those two woods are different in color and they react differently to stains and varnishes and oils. Google some woodworkers supply places, and buy some samples of each to experiment with so you can learn what works and what doesn't work.
Then you should consider getting a couple of good books that are just photo collections of older firearms. Some stocks came from the factory with a matte finish, or even a "finish" that didn't look like much other than a touch of stain. Others were semi-gloss or even high gloss. To refinish a stock correctly, you should be able to replicate what the original finish was fairly closely. (Either that, or make it clear to the customers that you only offer one grade of finish, and it may not match what their firearm had originally.)
Mosin-Marauder said:
Also, about the Iver Johnson Stock. I heard about steaming the stock to get the nicks and dings out. I took a pot of boiling water and coated the stock with it and let it sit out to dry
The method I have always heard and read about is to take a
small piece of cloth, wet it and lay it over the dent, then put the "nose" of a hot iron over it. Your mother might not appreciate your using her iron for that, but you can buy a cheap iron in a Wal-Mart or dollar store (or a tag sale) for not a whole lot of money and have your own, dedicated ding steamer, You DON'T want to wet large areas because that raises the grain, and it can also cause warping.
I have a friend who likes to makes wooden bowls on a lathe at home. For him this is a hobby -- he turns out a prodigious number of these things but he refuses to sell them -- he gives them away. (If they were sold in a store, they'd probably sell for fifty bucks or more, they are that nice.) The finish is like glass, and he accomplishes that by hand rubbing with boiled linseed oil. No Tung oil or prefabricated finishes, just boiled linseed oil. He rubs it in by hand, lets it sit for 24 or 48 hours, then repeats. Maybe six coats, maybe ten coats. It depends on the wood, he keeps going until the wood won't accept any more oil and the surface is uniformly glossy.
That's a very traditional method for finishing gunstocks. It would behoove you to learn it.
