What wood & finish is most awesome?

I do like a walnut stock on a rifle but prefer synthetic for use in bad weather. Never knew there were so many different Walnut versions.

When it comes to wood I really don't have a preference if it's oiled or polyurethane.
 
Being an older phart (64), I'm steeped in traditional looks of wood stocks. I do have one laminated stock on a Savage .17HMR, and that was difficult to get used too!

I don't like overly figured wood, but do appreciate a bit. Most of mine are walnut, but I do have a couple with birch, with both refinished with Truoil, and both look as good as any factory walnut stock, if not better.

Come to think of it, I do have two black stocks, one on a 10/22 and the other on an M&P 22.
 
Highly figured walnut is nice and very expensive. For something less expensive but with great strength and figure, look at Myrtlewood
 
Having worked with more than enough maple flooring to know has easily it splits and how unstable it is with regard to humidity and temp ..... I can't fathom how anyone would think it a good stock material for a high powered rifle ...... very pretty, yes, but if you are going to shoot it? And not have the zero wander around like some homeless vagabond? And why stain it? Just to show how much of a PITA project you can put up with? Foolishness.
 
After reading some of the replies, my question would be... what would be the strongest and most flexible wood to use?

I ask this because if you ever had to butt stroke an enemy combatant, you don't need the stock breaking! On the other hand, you wouldn't want it to break if it fell off the bench at the range.

What would be the best way to seal the wood from rain, wet hands and all the other things it will come into contact with?

I know, a little off topic but some things to think about if you plan on putting a nice stock on your new rifle.
 
What would be the best way to seal the wood from rain, wet hands and all the other things it will come into contact with?
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Oil finishes are nice, but whatever the poly-something is that Browning puts on their shotgun stocks (and I'll assume rifle as well), has got to be a top contender. It is impervious to bug spray, sunscreen, sweat, let alone rain - just coat the whole thing. My gunsmith charges more to redo a Browning stock because that finish is a PITA for him to get off compared to other finishes.
 
I like a nice stripey maple with a glossy oil finish, like on a Hawken gun:

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Maple is for muzzleloaders, walnut is for breechloaders.

Walnut is a good compromise between strength and weight. Any wood much stronger is way denser. Been a lot of enemies buttstroked with walnut.

I have seen some attractive laminates. They don't HAVE to be the garish walnut/birch of the Remington 600 Magnum. Walnut on walnut laminate can be hard to distinguish from grain.

There was once some work done with Accraglas bedding compound as a hard finish.
 
Figure.
Contrast.
Oil finish.

I'm even a fan of knotholes, inclusions, and sapwood - so long as the 'defect' does not compromise the stock.

Character is beauty.
 
what would be the strongest and most flexible wood to use?
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Walnut has all of the properties you need, and it's commercially grown so it's sustainably harvested. There are a lot of woods that are very strong but are hard to work or hard to get hold of a big enough piece to make a stock out of (apple, many nut woods, fruit woods). Tropical hardwoods are nice but are getting harder to get hold of (like Koa or Bubinga). Desert hardwoods are very nice, but since they grow so slow and are not cultivated, they are not sustainable (mesquite and ironwood come to mind). Maple is less dense than walnut but quite strong. Walnut comes in a lot of varieties, which all have their own look and feel. Claro is not a great wood for stocks for anything that has decent recoil, it is not very dense and is relatively soft, but it looks beautiful. Bastogne, French and English walnut tend to be very dense and are quite beautiful, but unfortunately the furniture makers of the world think so too. There are a lot of suitable woods to use for a stock, it doesn't have to be walnut. The prettiest non-traditional stock I ever saw was made of pecan wood, and apple or plum wood has beautiful grain. Just look around and see what there is and make a choice.
 
Desert woods can look amazing and are typically plenty strong for even very heavy recoil.
But they're difficult to find (especially for full-length stocks), expensive, and most are a pain to work with.

Earlier this year, I finished a knotty screwbean mesquite stock set.
The tree my wood came from was cut in the '50s and the company hasn't been able get more gun-quality blanks since the '70s. When the existing supply is exhausted (about 50 blanks), they'll be done with mesquite.
The only other company that I found selling desert wood stock blanks (screwbean mesquite in particular) went out of business in 2015, because they couldn't get permits to harvest any more trees and almost no one was willing to pay the asking price for his remaining "premium" blanks ($1,300 starting price for a blank that'll barely work for a shotgun butt).

Anyway...

My knotty screwbean mesquite was a nightmare to work with.
Varying hardness. Twisted grain. Inclusions. Holes. Absolute pain in the butt.
It's also very dense and very heavy, coming in just shy of ironwood for overall hardness. (Normal screwbean mesquite isn't quite as hard.)

Of course, the knot holes were wanted, but they compounded the problems.

It's what I wanted - stocks that looked like they were made from a fence post - and I do like the end result. But...

Never again.


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(Butt plate is not finished.)


Next up is some curly maple with a sapwood inclusion that took $250+ off the value. I hope to have that one done by spring.
(Same scope, different rifle.)

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And then on to another piece of figured maple with a -$400 sapwood inclusion - but for a Mauser. (-- No good photos.)
 
I prefer synthetic for my working rifles.

For something of a show piece, I like oil finished burl of suitable species.
 
Thanks, jimbob.
That scope was actually only for load development.
The comb was set for iron sights -- Skinner Winged Sights (front sight shown). They're very tall sights and work well with a raised comb.

The finish was Tung oil thinned with mineral spirits, starting very thin, and getting a little more potent as the wood soaked up the oil.
Final coats were Formby's Satin "Tung Oil Finish" (a wiping varnish) mixed with pure Tung oil and mineral spirits.
Knots were treated with the same solutions, but applied via syringe.

I'm not a fan of the sheen - I'd prefer more of a matte finish, which Formby's no longer offers - but I was dumb enough to not test the 'satin' on a piece of scrap before applying it to the stock. Over time, with handling and wear, it should lose a little of the luster and be closer to my goal.
 
Nothing beats a nice piece of walnut with a satin finish. The only plastic I own is an AR and I'm not impressed with it, maybe I'll get some walnut for it.
 
FM--That lever gun is outstanding looking! Really like the color and figure. The grain is so vivid, it does look kinda like it came from a gnarly old fence post, with lots of time invested.
 
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Here's one that I'm working on now in .30-06. I'll be posting a thread bout it. The color right there is the natural walnut with a little bit of water on it to raise the grain and expose the figure. Right now it's got a coat of polyurethane and 4 coats of hand rubbed oil and it still has a way to go to get a nice high gloss finish.
 
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