Well, I bit the bullet and used Rit Dark Brown Liquid dye. I mixed it about 1 part dye with 10 parts alcohol, then painted a fairly thin coat of this dye over the entire stock. It has dried, and I've done a first rubbing with linen,which has removed almost all the "feathers" from where the alcohol lifted the wood. One more rubdown with linen and I won't be able to feel any more roughness.
The color is like a dark oak. My wife said it looks like a gun again. This is what I wanted: I just didn't want any second looks from other shooters at the range.
I can now start the rest of the 30 daily Tun Oil rubdowns, and I think I will have a very nice looking MN.
I got the RIT liquid Dye from a wally superstore for under $3. I also bought a bottle of Denim color, but chickened out on it at the end. Maybe next time.
Henry, I have started to refinish one. Like you did, I have a problem with the light and dark wood, particularly in the end grain areas and right where the dove tail splice is in the butt stock. I tried the oxi-clean, just by soaking the area with a paper towel and rubbing. It didn't seem to help much. Did you soak yours in a tub or something like that? What method did you use to bleach yours? Maybe I need to dye mine too. Why did you use Rit dye, instead of wood stain? Thanks.
Roper, I used RIT because I'm cheap. Also since I could not get the blue stain or the cosmolene stains out, I just opted for a darker "wood" color overall. Looking back, I would probably just use Clorox liquid bleach next time. I would find a container long enough to soak the stock all at once. My stock had so many flaws and war wounds on it that I could never have gotten any kind of even color otherwise. But I now love each and every one of them. They add character, and reveal a LOT of considerable wooodworking skill and labor by some Russian citizens long ago and far away.
The birch is not uptaking the tung oil rubs nearly so well these days. It has been cold lately, so I think most of the tung oil is evaporating rather than soaking into the wood. It is taking maybe three days before the stock is ready for another linen rub. Because I'm in no rush, I'll stay with it for a few more cycles. I think this process is best done in summer.
Overall the finish is really beautiful, both to the eye and to the hand. I need to read up on how rifles and muskets were finished in colonial times. I expect tung oil was very commonly used in front of the fire. In my wife's family a wooden "flour bowl" has been passed down for several generations. It is used to batter fish and to make biscuits. The verbal instructions, also passed down, are to give it a tung oil rub every year or so.
Don't know if the colonists would have used tung oil, Henry. That comes from China and would have been very, very dear. It's more likely the English colonists would have used boiled linseed oil, as they would have had the seeds from which to obtain the oil from locally grown flax.
And yes, I agree it would have been something done of an evening by the fire, while someone in the family read from a book or the Bible and the rest of the family did crafty kinds of things.
Cyrano, when I was a kid there was a tung tree in our neighborhood, and all of us were warned that its fruit would quickly kill us. We were told that down-state in Florida tung groves previously occupied the real estate which was then being planted in oranges. I understand that tung was the first paint-base used in the USA, before they started using petro-based paints.
I expect that tung is a warm weather crop, and that you are right that those trees were imported after colonial times. I'm still interested in how the colonial musket's furniture was finished. Linseed oil sounds reasonable. It might be fun to try a MN with linseed oil, a more antique finish than even tung.
Thanks for getting back to me on this. I was hoping that you would be able to give me a miracle cure for the dark spots. Oh well. Unlike yours, my wood is in pretty good condition. It was just the finish that was really bad. Now that I have removed it, I have found just a few dings and scrapes. The worst part is some dark wood on a large area of the lower portion of the dove tail splice. This makes the splice really stand out. The endgrain areas are also dark, but I don't think anything can be done about them. This rifle probably was once a Big 5 special, and may have never been cleaned properly. It may be that all of the cosmoline has never been baked out of it, so I will try that next. Then, I will try soaking it in bleach, like you said. If I could get it only a little bit better, it would be okay, because I want a medium shade of stain on it anyway. I just know that preparation is everything, and I'm in no big rush to finish it. I have two others to shoot, with a fourth on its way.
Henry, it sounds like you have a nightmare project. The color differences are probably caused by different facets of wood grain on the stock surface. The small dowel plugs are most likely end-grain, which sucks up stain and finish like a sponge. At this point I would recommend adding an opaque stain to the tung oil and doing many layers. Things won't start evening-out until you start obscuring the grain. It's not a great look, but it's better than paint.
The only other course I can think of is to strip the stock back to the bare wood. Then I would use Klean-strip wood bleach. It's a 2 part bleach that you put on 5-10 minutes apart, then neutralize with white vinegar about 2 hours later. After that I would use a sanding sealer to fill in the pores and sand down any raised grain. Next, I would mix a 50/50 solution of tung oil and thinner and do one coat on the stock. After that I would add a stain or tint like the ones from Rockler to straight tung oil and use it on the rest of the coats. I've never tried RIT, so I can't say how that would work.
This is a lot of work for what you get. Hopefully Cyrano has a better idea on how to save what you've done so far.
BTW, I have an old Mossberg shotgun that I'm refinishing with tung oil. I've always wet-sanded from 400-1000 grit for the last several layers, but I like the linen cloth idea. Will give it a try and see how I like it.
Well, I bit the bullet and used Rit Dark Brown Liquid dye. I mixed it about 1 part dye with 10 parts alcohol, then painted a fairly thin coat of this dye over the entire stock. It has dried, and I've done a first rubbing with linen,which has removed almost all the "feathers" from where the alcohol lifted the wood. One more rubdown with linen and I won't be able to feel any more roughness.
The color is like a dark oak. My wife said it looks like a gun again. This is what I wanted: I just didn't want any second looks from other shooters at the range.
I can now start the rest of the 30 daily Tun Oil rubdowns, and I think I will have a very nice looking MN.
I got the RIT liquid Dye from a wally superstore for under $3. I also bought a bottle of Denim color, but chickened out on it at the end. Maybe next time.
Henry, can you post a pic of the RIT dye job? I've never found a wood stain that can give a nice even coat over a mix like your stock. Could change the way I do some finishing.
Thanks for getting back to me on this. I was hoping that you would be able to give me a miracle cure for the dark spots. Oh well. Unlike yours, my wood is in pretty good condition. It was just the finish that was really bad. Now that I have removed it, I have found just a few dings and scrapes. The worst part is some dark wood on a large area of the lower portion of the dove tail splice. This makes the splice really stand out. The endgrain areas are also dark, but I don't think anything can be done about them. This rifle probably was once a Big 5 special, and may have never been cleaned properly. It may be that all of the cosmoline has never been baked out of it, so I will try that next. Then, I will try soaking it in bleach, like you said. If I could get it only a little bit better, it would be okay, because I want a medium shade of stain on it anyway. I just know that preparation is everything, and I'm in no big rush to finish it. I have two others to shoot, with a fourth on its way.
Verne
Hi Verne,
The only thing I've found that helps with end grain is a sanding sealer. It won't let the stain absorb as deeply as raw wood, but it will make it go in more evenly.
I'm refinishing a Mossberg stock and just used straight tung oil. The end grain is a bit darker, but it looks natural.
I think I'm very close to finishing work on this stock. It is refusing to take any more tung oil, and the "drying time" between tung applications and linen rubs is maybe a week or more. I'm applying tung oil now by just touching my thumb to a saucer into which I have placed maybe five drops of tung oil. This tiny amount of oil will cover maybe 1/4 of the entire stock, so goes a LONG way!
I think the Rit dye filled most of the pores of the birch, because once I applied the dye the birch just quit taking tung oil as readily. But the dye was a necessity to even out the binary coloration I had in this VERY war-weary stock. I'm sure any stain I had used would have acted in a similar way.
As per Cyrano's suggestion, I will soon be finishing up with a final coat of tung oil varnish. I expect a translucent finish, which reveals all the war wounds and repairs. An objective observer will probably consider this stock pretty ugly, but believe me I never will. This "pore bastid" of a stock will always look beautiful to me. I'm pretty old to have fallen in love with a stupid rifle, but I fear that I have.
If you have room in your heart for another love, I recommend a tung oil finish for a wounded warrior POS MN.
Read thread and saw use of tung oil for refinish. I used Linseed oil and left wood natural on my M.N. Thought to post pics of my linseed effort and hope you approve.
Junior
__________________ PLAYING the hand life dealt me!
VERY NICE, Junior! I want to add a scout scope, but my cross-pins refuse to budge, so I can't get down to the dovetail mount below. I see that you too had to mount your scope leaving the old sight base intact. Did you use a commercial mount, or did you have to make it yourself?
Yeah! That finish really brought out the grain. Very nice. Hope mine comes out that good.
My bleaching hasn't turned out all that well. I couldn't find any Klean-Strip bleach locally. I found some other stuff, oxalic acid, that is supposed to work. I started out following the instructions, which didn't seem to do anything. So, of course, I mixed it a little stronger. Still didn't do anything. Mixed it stronger..........I wound up with kind of a paste, that I spread on the stock. That seems to have worked some. Now, after it has dried, it appears to be much lighter on the surface. If you wet it a little, though, the dark areas show right away. This is going to take more work and some luck. I am hoping that it will turn out more even, when I stain it.
HK770, that turned out very nicely indeed. Puts me in mind of the finish on my plinking Yugo SKS. Having good wood to start with, as you obviously did, makes a tremendous difference.
Thanks all for your kind words. Took a month of rubbing while watching the tube. I thought it came out well for my ability at wood working. The scope mount is an S&k unfortunately it was almost the same cost as rifle. It and the scope allows my old eyes to do a fair job.
Later....Junior
__________________ PLAYING the hand life dealt me!
