BrentD: I'll stick to my watered down finish for the first couple of layers because it seems to work for me. Most folks though will only put in 5 or 10 minutes with their first gooey applications and feel that things really got soaked up. I think a good many failures in stock sealing are due to not enough focus in the areas where wood and metal mesh. Seems to be an out of sight out of mind thing. Water should bead just as well on the inner portions of a stock as it does on the exterior. Stocks on many factory rifles have those areas looking like they just came off a rip saw with splintered wood sticking out everywhere around the action, magazine well and barrel channel. Those splinters are certainly pipelines for moisture as they have a lot of brittle surface area. A stock inletted with good sharp chisels, gouges, and scrapers will have none of that. Quality does cost money or time though, and most folks want off the shelf cheap, and won't put any further work into a unit.
Second is really working to get a complete fill of the pores. The pore sealing thing is the reason I go through the application of so many layers and sanding. Depending on the wood, it may take as few as 2 and as many as 8 layers with sanding in between to get the pores filled and smoothed over. It looks like my present project is going to be one of those 8 layer deals. Beautiful wood, but a lot of depth to some of the pores. Layers 5 and 6 went on this weekend, pores are about 98% filled now with only 8 or 10 still showing, and layers 7 and 8 will go on in another 2 weeks. A light but thorough sanding, and a couple more ultra thin coats and it should be near perfect. A month or so of drying after that and some paste wax should wrap it up. Nothing says I can't go shoot it in the mean time though. Will post a photo when it's done.
Third, I don't own any stocks with a lot or burl, but my readings suggest their mix of grain directions and variable density makes them terribly hard to seal over the long run. The wood seems to shrink/swell and flex in so many directions that minute cracks in the finish are inevitable.
Lastly, a lot of factory wood is not dried sufficently before working. It's very dry where I live here in eastern Oregon, and the stock on the last Mark V Weatherby I brought home kept moving for another 2.5 years. I had to float and reseal that unit 3 times before it stayed put. Have the same issue with furniture here too. Everything comes loose in about 1 or 2 years and has to be reseated and glued. Take care, 1Minute
