Quote:
Originally Posted by
Shuak 
| Will post as soon as it's done. Anyone know what color the bare wood should be when cosmo free? want this to be a decent refinish. |
So many different woods have been used to make Mosin stocks, the correct answer to this question is, "Beats me." The Russian ones I've futzed around with end up a pale yellow, which I think means they are birch or maybe beech. I think the ChiComs actually used teak on some of theirs and that, post-Cosmoline, comes a light tan (if my SKS is anything to judge by; it has a teak stock). Legend has it the Remingtons and Westinghouses used American walnut. I won't swear to that, never having seen or handled one.
The only way to find out is to remove all the Cosmoline, lightly sand the wood with 0000 steel wool or 400 wet-or-dry sandpaper, wipe it clean and see what you've got there. If you don't like the natural tone of the wood, you can stain the wood with whatever color MinWax stain you prefer before you seal it with tung oil varnish/finish (the quart can of Hope's I bought 20-plus years ago to use on furniture I was restoring uses
both words - go figure which one is 'correct!') or BLO (which I don't recommend because it takes so long to dry).
MinWax works really well on Mosin stocks. Somewhere back in the threads is one with photos of a restored M44 one of our members stained
blue. It looks a lot better than you'd think, which tells you a great deal about the quality of MinWax.
It's your stock. Do what you want to with it. But post some photos when it's all done and back together, will you? I want to see how it turned out and what you finally chose to use on it. And I bet I'm not the only one.
