Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles "reddish" walnut on current M70

So i'm considering buying another FN made model 70 featherweight. I absolutely love them, except for the colour of the stain they apply to the walnut at factory.

Is it possible to remove this stain? I hope to just oil finish it afterwards so it looks like walnut should. Without the red tinge. Thanks.

also, as of late I have seen a couple of these down here with a very different pistol grip shape than normal. Did winchester re-design this part of the stock? Bare in mind I am in australia

I at least am not aware of any changes to the stock design but that doesn't mean much. As far as changing the color, yes it is possible to use some finish remover and sand paper to get to the bare wood and make it more to your liking.

It's better than some of the New Haven ones that looked like they were dipped in chocolate.

I picked up one of the earliest Featherweights put together in Portugal and its stock is the darkest piece of walnut I've ever seen on a gun. Not a hint of red.

Thats good to hear. Really considering grabbing another.

Maybe I'm color blind. But the new 280 Shot Show Special that just arrived, doesn't look any "redder" to me than the earlier ones.

I actually like the red.

The feather weight stock has gone through several iterations.
Not sure what FN is doing now but on the earlier FN models the Schnabel was abbreviated to more like a Rem 7 than the original. The pistol grip also seems closer or less open.

When production was moved to Portugal the stocks may have been changed back to more like the New Haven Models, I'm not sure. Seems like the super grade kept more to the late New Haven Pattern.

My New Haven stocks got the chocolate stain, I was thinking of stripping them and then using either a classic m70 red stain or alkanet root. So to each their own.

Mines red.

After it gets beat up a bit it will be refinished.

Excuse my ignorance, but when you say more like the New Haven models are you referring to the colour of the walnut, or the stock pattern?

Stock Pattern but the color is different too. More brown and opague. The above rifle looks to be the FN and just slightly different than the New Haven stocks. The fore end tip is less rounded and the peak is a little shorter than on the older stocks. Look at the McMillan fiberglass stock it was molded directly from an older USRAC stock.

Sorry I can't post a photo much easier to see that way.

A Winchester should have a red hue to it...in my opinion.

If they'd put a red Decelerator on it, I think they'd have almost made up for the MOA trigger...although frankly I don't have an issue with it.

Excellent. Thanks for clarifying.

Be advised that if you strip off the factory finish (and that stain), you might not like what you find underneath. There's a reason gun manufacturers stain the hell out of their walnut - sapwood. You could wind up with a stock with about as much color as a piece of pine, or one that's part heartwood and part sapwood. Then you'll wind up having to re-stain the thing anyway.

I just "fixed" a current Mod 70, from a bad scrape and dent. PrimeBeef is correct. I couldn't believe what was under that finish. Whatever it was it wasn't furniture grade walnut. Also, one side was dark wood and the other side light, so I had to mix different gel stains to get it to match. Penetrating stains made it worse. You can tell that the modern process of production gun finishing is very different than the old days.