Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors What the heck is "London Oil Finish"?

Listed in the #60 catalog, 1916 I believe. Don't see it in any other catalogs that I have information on.

It's not the standard "Extra finish", that's listed also.

Extra finish on stock - $2. London oil finish - $2.75.

Probably a little marketing hype for the time. Funny how people would consider a "London Oil Finish" as something valid but think you were nuts if you mentioned a Detroit, Chicago or Kansas City "oil finish." But I could be wrong.

I did a quick google and it appears to be an actual thing. Just didn't have time to read up on it, much less know how it applies to 1899's made around 1916.

Hoped somebody here would be familiar with it.

Dunkelberger will know , Its that deep oil finish. Think Dodge rifle.

What he said!

Probably nothing to do with it but when I was in London I visited the Royal Coach works.
Watched a gentleman finishing a coach door. He explained that he sanded,rubbed,and polished it to a mirror finish, then put 40 coats of secret oil finish on it.
Was splendid thing to see. And the oil smelled like BLO

Lots of linseed rubbed in by English maidens.

Oil with varnish mixed in, the exact proportions closely guarded by whichever old bewhiskered craftsman was mixing it, not to mention the odd metallic compound added here and there to provide mystical qualities. Sometimes a bit of beeswax was melted in and the mixture applied when warm so everything stayed in solution. Secret is to fill the pores first- that's where the extra labor and higher cost comes in. In the olden days varnish was applied and sanded right back down to the bare wood surface taking fastidious care to not sand away the varnish in the pores. Repeated as necessary until the pores are 100% filled and the surrounding wood is bare. (Nowadays varnish is still used- I do- and epoxy is a great substitute. The problem is with varnish it can shrink over time and telegraph through the finish to reveal miniscule pore craters. That's why you should let it cure for a while before oiling to make sure you don't get tricked. Epoxy fixes that but is a royal PIA because it's so hard.) Then the oil/varnish mixture is applied. Wax with a good paste wax when done.

I've yet to meet a proprietary pore filler that beats varnish or epoxy, but they are easier to apply, for sure. (But like all things in this man's world you get what you pay for, and there is no panacea for plain hard work.)

Of course all this works best on thin shell walnut stocks (English/French/Circassian/etc. walnut) with miniscule pores. Our American black walnut with its Grand Canyon-like pores is a bigger challenge.

Sometimes old recipes called for shellac instead of varnish, but to my way of thinking then you're getting into the realm of French Polishes, and besides who wants shellac on a gun stock. (Think about the real possibility of it getting wet when hunting, and harken back to what a wet drink glass does to a shellaced table top- turns white.) On the other hand, if it's an exhibition-only kind of masterpiece, why not?

Somewhere downstairs I have the remainder of an English stock finishing system. It consisted of three parts, an oil, a hardening agent, and something else, I forget what. I used it on several stocks perhaps 25 years ago. Back then I tried to get more of the stuff, but was unable to get any. It came from the U.K. I think that was London oil finish. Now I use Permalyn.

One recipe calls for 50/50 raw Linseed oil/raw walnut oil dyed with Alkanet root.

Raw walnut oil . I wonder how that is produced.

I knew somebody here would know this. Odd it was only listed for a year or few. Wonder if there are any ledger entries for it?

Any of you know what the "Extra finish on stock" entails? I believe that the standard finish during this time would have been varnish. Is it just extra coats of varnish?

That's a good question, and partially why I asked this.

There's high end guns like the bottom one here of Fug's, which definitely might be "Extra finish on stock". It surely has extra coats, but is it just extra finish? Or might this be an example of the London Finish?




But I've seen a few that seem as though they just have a "deeper" or "thicker" finish than normal. This 1899 SR for example. But maybe this one is just "pristine"?

Every time I see pics of Fug's rifles, it makes all mine look like a pile of junk

Nice find!

The article connects the time period, to the catalog extra, to an example and a pics of the example. It's a thing.

As previously stated, the exact recipe & technique are the wild cards.

Maybe extra finish was a way of making your stocks more impervious to the elements more so than an item of luxury. Kind of like using a synthetic stock today as opposed to wood. More a thing of utility in a day when stocks were restricted to wood. Seems to me if you were going to push a high grade stock finish to adorn a high end 99 you would use a term more exotic term "extra." Something more like London or French.

You may be on to something. Although before redoing some stocks in varnish I didn't know how thick to apply them, so experimented on some test boards. The more you put on, the easier it is to harm/break the finish. Maybe the normal varnish finish was just enough to fill and coat the stock, and extra would give the deep glossy finish.