Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Sealing a maple wood stock

Pure tung oil is exactly as good as linseed oil. Virtually no difference and both allow atmospheric water in or out faster than bare wood.

My contention remains that matching.the exterior finish in the barrel channel allows water to be transferred rqually throughout. Thereby helping to stablize the stock.

Does anyone apply paste wax at any time?

SitkaDeer - as a matter of friendly discussion I am skeptical of your first claim. The dimensional stability of any given species is, for the most part, a known data point, since we've had time to find and categorize by that particular data point for some time now. Essentially, bare wood of any species will have a given hygroscopic rate of transfer, and a major factor of influence would be whether or not that species was open celled or closed celled (i.e. White Oak vs. Red Oak). We know that plasticized resins are hygroscopic prior to cure, and less hygroscopic post cure, otherwise there'd by no reason at all to put a finish on a dinner table. Same with exothermic curing oils (or drying oils - I don't filet people for using either term). So, in summary, to apply any finish at all, realizes an advantage in the protection or reduction of wood movement, since a film or barrier of a sort is being placed over the wood.

Your contention that matching exterior finishes is a point on which I agree. But, I suspect that Mach3 won't know what that is unless he calls the maker and asks what that finish is, and if they are anything like furniture manufacturers, he might get the iron curtain treatment. I won't claim that I know what the finish is on his stock, but I am of the opinion that since he is addressing a post manufacturing issue, that whatever is most available to him might be good enough.

Excellent points, well made, especially the final point. However, there are few woods commonly used for stocks which reduces the range of data points considerably and I should have been more clear about that.

That said, emperical testing is fun and easy. Once upon a time I made ridiculous numbers of test cubes with different finishes and tracked their weights over time and humidity changes. I stand by the fact oils, even when cured, suck up water vapor faster than bare walnut, maple, beech, and cherry.

A long thin strip with oil on one side and poly on the other will bend as relative humidity changes. Thank you for your clarity and comments.