Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Looking for some advice on a pure tung oil finish

Nope, nothing to do with "physics"...Alaska is Alaska is like California is California...state of mind of the denizens of different kinds of Wilderness.

???

Channeling Gus?

gnoahhh, I read an article by a respected finisher in I think it was a Rifle reprint where he discovered a technique that gave him the finish he always wanted and in a shore time. He shared the technique with another respected finisher who couldn't get even acceptable (to him) results. Told me some good methods may work for one guy but not another. Practice boards, find the technique that works for you if you want more than an average finish.

Lived in Alexandria/Arlington but worth it for the oysters and crabs.

There are lousy teachers and lousy students...

And sometimes they cross paths.

There is no reason for incantations, lip sets, oblique lighting, or secret codes...

Some of you mean to turn this into alchemy...

If a method works, it always works or it’s a different method.

Yeah, next old rifle I buy, am making sure I get another with the same stock so that I can saw it in half after using it as a "practice board".

How I'd say it. Like me and the slop on - wipe off method. Like Sitka pointed out (thanks) I'm using the same method but probably out of habit doing something wrong with the way I'm doing it.

??? You don't have scraps of walnut where you live? Doing a test board is, like, Finishing 101.

Menard's etc. sells pieces of plain walnut cheap enough. Not the same but close enough I've found.

More like a prerequisite for High School Wood Shop back in the day...

Sad when someone was mislead and insists on passing bad info on. Even when good info, and an easy route to proving it, is available.

Well it seems like there's controversy regarding the ability of solvents to cause tung or linseed oils to penetrate deeper into wood. My two cents, which are worth a penny these days, is that the particles that make up tung or linseed oils are larger than those that constitute solvents - I may be wrong. But if so, the oil is only going to go down so deep into the wood - based on its density - and the solvent will go deeper - based on lesser density. Its kind of like how things migrate through soil (or how soil is formed) if you ever look at the sidewall profile of a trench. To me, solvents have always been a way to thin the materiel I use for the finish. So if the tung oil I am using is too thick and gooey I can make it work better by thinning it out with a solvent (being the son of a mechanic I have to say that solvents were usually good for cleaning up parts and jobs and not much else). I think artist use this idea when adding linseed oil to paint to make it flow better or to increase its working time before drying. Anyhow, that's my two cents worth which I'm sure has suffered considerably from the effects of inflation in the short time it took to write this post. Thanks again to everyone who kicked in on this post. I appreciate your help.

Bingo. I use solvents (usually naptha) to slightly thin top coats of varnish precisely for that reason- to make it flow better.

A very important point you made is about increasing working time of your finish... that is absolutely true. But because the solvent evaporates leaving less finish it is often confused with speeding the drying...

There is no magic; it cannot increase working time (pot life, open time, etc) without delaying curing.

Makes sense to me. Seems like you can have, say, 8-oz of tung oil in a cup to use on your stock. The 8-oz in the cup represents 100% of your finishing material and it is 100% tung. Now I can drain 4-oz out of that cup and add 4-oz of mineral spirits and still have the original 100% (quantity) of finishing material, but now 50% is solvent and only 50% is tung. And, as such, I would expect for that 50/50 solution to only be half as effective in accomplishing the job of finishing a gun stock because it contains less oil. Funny how its called thinner, eh? So now I have to ask if penetration actually decreases with the use of solvents as I would assume such solutions evaporate faster and transport less oil to he wood for every individual application. I also have to ask if it takes longer to get a stock job done for the same reasons. I guess I just came full circle with my dad and now see solvents as primarily good for cleaning up. Sorry for yammering on but I’m sitting here with a cup of coffee waiting on an oil change and as Paul Harvey used to say, “and now you know the rest of the story.”

Tell the oil change guys to thin the oil with some mineral spirits. It'll soak into the bearings better.

Will do and they’ll dig selling me a new engine too!

Laughing!

But BINGO!

Same mindset in Berkeley, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco. When are you guys having your parade?

Ah man. That wasn't called for. This is just a forum. When things make me pissed I just tell myself that all I'm reacting to are an ordered set of electrons on a computer screen that may, or may not, represent an actual human being. Its just talk and furthermore its just talk about ideas. Nobody has a gun to their heads. Its all cool.

Please, wake up and smell the solvent!

You have to know you are only guessing and continuing to dig when you are in a deep hole makes you look foolish and butthurt.