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

Thanks. I'll have to check out "Hope's" brand of tung oil. The stuff I have been using is distributed by Wind River and it is thick. I previously described it as thick as honey but on second thought its more like pancake syrup.

Put it on your flapjacks. Perhaps thin it first so it digests better.

I will remember to do that! I'll have to add that its not as runny as that low calorie pancake syrup crap, but instead its more like high grade maple syrup.

With the delightful golden amber color?

Is there anything else?!

Comes right down to it, any more it is easier to skip the guessing game and I just go straight for Truoil. It seems they've all become some type of wiping varnish these days. Unless I want a clear finish, then I'll go for a good spray lacquer. As most finishers know, most of the finish is in the prep.

True, but I was intentionally going with the “old timey” approach to this project.

Truoil- solely a success because of Birchwood Casey's shrewd marketing in getting it on the rack in every gun shop in America. No more, no less.

While their marketing plan was brilliant, their product did not suck... TruOil is a viable finish at a relatively high price.

When I was a kid I knew a guy who had a tree trimming business and made gunstock blanks on the side. He, and others too, said that the beauty of Tureoil was that it allowed you to get a stock finished fast. After going "old school" with my M2 stock I now have a greater appreciation for what those guys said.

Sitka, Who said start with a small bottle, like 4 oz., of 50/50 spar varnish/drying oil and top it off with more oil after every application? Was that you? Pretty much Tru-Oil, no?

Yes, it is a common quick finish for me to use a new 4oz container of Spar Varnish and top it off with oil as I go... I never start with a 50/50 mix, but the end result is probably well over 50% oil. I slather the finish on and wait before wiping, so I use plenty.

TruOil is a proprietary blend and hard to know exactly what they use, but it has lots of the same resins commonly used in spar varnishes and very similar to the final total assay. However it gives the advantage (over TruOil) in giving resins in the base coat where it will do the most good and oils on the surface where it will produce the nicest finish.

Where I use TruOil over an epoxy base coat it works very well on myrtle... for some reason I have found the combination to work extremely well there. Pretty much to the exclusion of every other finish there. However, on walnuts I have found it is good, but I like other combinations, though I often (almost always) put a single coat of TruOil over epoxy and different oil finishes over that. I hate to admit I do not have a sound basis to justify it. But, I "feel" the TruOil makes a great binder coat between epoxy and oil. That is NOT based on any science or testing, but it makes me feel better doing it.

I have done many test boards with it and never really saw any difference or reason for it, but it makes me feel good...

Absolutely! And a new coat every few hours when the TruOil is fresh is very easy to do.

Thanks for the explanation. I have a second stock I'm prepping for finish. I have been tinking for some time about using spar varnish as a base coat and I now think i'll do it - though I may stick with tung or refined linseed oil as the top coat.

Somewhere buried in my boxes of crud I have a NRA publication from the late 50s/early 60s that talks about spar varnish and TruOil. And that was the golden era of DIY milspec sporter conversions so I suspect they had a big audience for publishing DIY gunsmithing articles.

Spar varnish builds awfully fast for true mil-spec finishing... TruOil does not build as fast, but does create a very glossy surface eventually. To improve the authentic look it does require a rub-out.

I think that's where I got the idea of starting with the 50/50 mix. Best I've been able to tell from a lot of reading Tru-Oil is a blend of spar varnish and drying oil, either BLO or tung (as if it really mattered) though no good hints on proportions.

Did a quick check and found a MSDS I don't remember seeing before:
Mineral spirits > 56% (by weight)
Modified oil < 33% (could be a cryptic way of saying varnish, or not)
Linseed oil < 11%

The next stock project is a Savage 40/45 stock from the 1930s. So I'll be shooting for something that looks appropriate for a commercial firearm from that period. I used to think it was more of an open grain finish, but after looking at a number of well preserved specimens from the period I pretty convinced the grain was filled. When refinishing stocks on older rifles I also try to make the finish on the wood match the condition of the metal, otherwise it ends up looking painfully obvious that the stock had be redone.

Didn't read all the advice but what I am doing is oiling then varnishing or sometimes a varnish shellac mix like Parker and other shot gun companies used. The fill coat is sanded back to almost bare wood. Then I go with what Art has advised an oil/spar varnish mix. I also add some Japan dryer or cobalt as these help the oils to dry from the inside. As you start to get a build up wait longer and longer each coat. I like James Howes method on "Modern Gunsmithing" of using a rotten stone & oil felt buffing wheel to apply the coats after the filler is done. This starts the buffing process and can take weeks off the finishing time. The wood is burnished in the process. It develops a fair amount of heat and you can actually burn the wood if you over do it.

A final couple of coats are Slacum which is oil, turpentine, Carnuba/Bees Wax, and some dryer. This is for the final buffing out and the Beeswax adds a soft luster better than anything else I have tried. The final slacum coat is not very durable for several years but is easy to re-apply. It eventually gets quite hard and the Carnuba speeds this up but doesn't buff out as satiny as the Beeswax. You can skip all this and just buff any modern finish and wax and then one final buffing for a similar result which is more durable.

Same here. I bought a bottle of Hope's pure tung oil off Amazon for an 870 stock and forearm. The shipping took for-friggen-ever, but it was worth the wait. Can vouch it is good stuff.