I got bored today and decided I wanted my stock a little lighter so I cleaned it again with mineral Spirits and 000 steel wool.After finishing that and seeing how it was looking better already I decided to try my hand at steaming the stock. I layed out some towels and heated up the iron, I would wet a wash cloth and lay it over the dent then put the iron to it untill it stopped steaming.It worked great, most of the smaller places cleared up in no time and the bigger ones were alot better after doing it 2 or 3 times like this.Its not perfect and where the wood edges were broken it wont come all the way out but its a easy thing to do. It did raise the grain in a few places and after it dryed I went over them with 0000 steel wool lighty and it was smooth as a babys butt.Question...last time I used BLO and OMS 50/50 and it still came out darker then I wanted, whats the mininum I can thin the BLO and it still work ?
Stocks It's amazing what you can do with ( Some ) Pieces of wood. What works once doesn't always mean it will work twice. Being the Son of a Carpenter I still mess with wood alot.. But recently purchased a T/C Hawkin Kit that was new about 20 years ago & the owner didn't ever do anything to the wook, only the barrell & metal parts so he never finsihed the kit.. This walnut stock was about my match of all the wood I've ever played with. One side is beautiful, while the other side looks & appears in all likely hood another spiece's of Walnut from the heart of the tree. Piffy open grain & ugly... I tried everything to raise the grain to help fill the voids & it made it worse.... So I ended up with two diff- rent guns wheather I'm headed north or south.. LOL
I sanded it other night with 400 grit paper and rubbed it back down with OMS,tonight I put on its first coat of Tung oil then buffed it down 15 min later and now it will dry till tomorrow night and I'll do its second and final coat. Heres what the stock looked like after sanding, this is off my M1 Garand.
Don't mess with the BLO, just go straight to Tung oil. You can thin it down pretty well but why bother. Tung oil dries so much faster and works into the grain more. With real bad dents where the wood fiber has been broken you can use Acraglass bedding compound to fill it in. Mix it up and add some sanding dust and apply to the dent. Let harden and smooth it up. Of course if you are dyeing or staining the wood then you may need to add some to the compound as you mix it to match it up.
Late to the game again, but I'll throw this out there. Mineral spirits add oils to the stock. Using turpentine will get more junk out. I applied turp with 0000 steel wool, let it dry, then applied a few more applications to get all the crap out. I then used Tom's 1/3 Gun wax available from www.thegunstockdoctor.com and it has worked VERY well. It has bee's wax, BLO, and turpentine. Sounds odd, but it works VERY well. Here is my stock beforehand. I had previously sanded VERY lightly, used cleaners and applied Howard's restor-a-finish and some of their wax/oil. Looked hazy after about 2 weeks. Drove me nuts and I couldn't see my grains very well. Well, after doing the turpentine then applications of the 1/3 mix following Tom's recommendations, it looks like this: Despite the coloring, the stock still has the nice aged red appearance (my camera's color was off due to the grass I think). Even in the house with indirect light, it looks MUCH better than before.
