[dragunovsks]

I'm thinking of refinishing the stock for my Yugo SKS, I've had it for several years and the cosmo is long gone (the previous owner who is a friend of mine took care of removing all cosmo). What would be the first step in starting the refinishing process?

 

[Southern6er]

I'd still strip it down a bit using Turpentine to get any current finishes off. Once the wood is dried, are you wanting to stain it? Varnish?

I use Tom's 1/3 Military mix in a natural color (doesn't really stain) and it's a combination of Turp, BLO, and bee's wax. I'm sure is some other stuff in there too, but it doesn't really darken the wood. He has a darker version available too and I've heard good things about it.

And the stuff is really inexpensive from www.thegunstockdoctor.com.

 

[dragunovsks]

I'm not sure whether I want to stain or varnish it yet. I saw an interesting SKS stock on SKSboards.com in which a guy used a small propane torch to burn the stock in several areas and then sealed it. It really was pretty cool how he did it. I was thinking of stripping the current finish with turpintine and then doing some real light sanding (hand sanding of course) to git rid of some of the roughness.

 

[Southern6er]

Understand ya there... Here's how it looked after initial cleaning with just some restor-a-finish done to it.

here's how my stock is today after using that natural mix...