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?
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.
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.
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...
