Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Learning to use Aquafortis on maple

Take about 4 or 5 tea bags and boil the heck out of them. Then take a brush and cover the stock. That provides tannic acid to the stock.
Next put the stock into a small enclosed area like a box, and fill a small container with ammonia. The ammonia will impact with the tannic acid and give the color you are looking for . It especially works well with fiddleback as the contrast is great. Try it on a sample and see what it does to maple.

I have used this method on numerous maple stocks.