Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Tru Oil not drying?

i am not a wood finisher, i only do finishing on my rifles for fun.

i've used Minwax Antique Oil for a few rifles. then i use Minwax Polyurethane OIL and mineral spirits.(3 poly:1 mineral spirits). it protects (somewhat) the finish. i'll coat 3 or so times of Poly/Mineral spirits.

make sure of Polyurethane OIL, not water based poly. you can use Warm Semi-Gloss, Warm Gloss, Warm Satin, Warm Ultra Flat sheen. after it dries, i use Johnsons paste wax.

'16 Spanish Mauser

sealing the wood





'98 Mauser 1944

My buddy uses mccloskeys varnish . fwiw he's a Trindad grad.

Your buddy does nice work.

Watco Danish Oil. Maybe not the toughest but its wipe on , easily touched up, and looks good. Besides, its not like I'm going to hunt in Alaskan bogs.

Going back to the original subject: Did you clean/neutralize the site where you applied the TruOil? I suggest prepping with lacquer thinner or denatured alcohol to remove any possible residue contaminants. Many resins refuse to cure when applied over oils or other substances that they won't readily chemically combine with.

Watco Danish oil is a product with no real use. The solids count is very, very low. And VOS is way high. The resulting finish will be special on a warm day in the south when the solvents trapped below the little solids there are fenestrates them (makes holes in the finish) and you get a handful of sticky pimples.

Pro Custom Oil, Brownells







there are many, many more.

What's wrong with Linspeed oil? For me it's worked better than anything else. --- Mel

I removed (by sanding) the awful red finish on a Ruger 44 carbine and refinished with Linspeed. came out very nice. Forend was covered with an amateur checkering job.

Pro Oil is my current fav.

A stock maker taught me a trick. Soak the wood with Pro Oil, take a small square of 400 wet or dry sand paper and sand in swirls until a slurry develops. Give is a few minutes to thicken, then wipe across the grain. Allow 24 hrs. to fully dry. Do it again, maybe a time or two more, depending on how dense the wood is. Less dense, more coats. This fills the pores and sets the base. Then apply Tru Oil a few times, lightly sanding between coats as needed, Then a few more coats of Pro-Oil. He lightly wipes the Pro Oil with a single layer of a blue shop towel. Pretty amazing how that works.

Then, when fully dry, he applies Fiebings dark brown leather dye to achieve the color he wants. He's dying the finish, NOT the wood. Lightly using 4-0 steel wool to blend and adjust color. Then a few more coats of Pro Oil.

Tru Oil dries fast, Pro Oil needs 24 hrs.

Here's a Pre-64 with Krieger 6.5-284 barrel in a Boyd's Jon Sundra laminated birch stock with that finish. Weird looking trigger is a Jewell.

DF

Wait for it.

He’s a real pro.

DF

i used it, but linspeed oil takes sooooo long to dry, 2 to 4 days. i had a week to let it dry. Minwax Antique Oil is good to me. also i do 2 or 3 coats of Minwax Polyurethane Oil mixed with mineral spirits (3:1) to protect the Antique Oil finish.

I used Linspeed exactly once. Like so many of we humans do, I let myself be soured about it as the result of that one experience - and it may have been my fault at that, dunno. I used it to do the wood on a custom M94 .30-30 I built. Wet sanded in to the fill the pores, multiple coats afterwards, yada yada, gorgeous end result on a gun intended for rough usage. That deer season in PA opened with torrential downpours, and back then I hunted regardless of the weather. Oh, the hubris of youth! As I sat hunkered at the base of a tree hating life as the rain soaked me to the marrow, I watched as my tediously applied finish softened and riveled. In disgust I used my handkerchief to scrub off what the rain failed to wash off. When I got home and dried out, the wood was totally bare, naked pores and all.

Of course I blamed the Linspeed. Maybe I should blame myself for being an idiot. The upshot of it all was to adopt a dislike for "oil" finishes on any gun intended for actual field use, and 43 years later I still do. Of course I've employed oil finishes, and do truly like the look, but only on "Sunday-go-to-meeting" guns that will never be subjected to egregious weather. The real work horses get a barrier finish (and more than a few of "the fancy guns" too).

An old pal/mentor from long ago who was an Army artificer (armorer who traveled with an infantry unit) in Europe, WWII, related to me how when he set up shop in his mobile workshop (Deuce-and-a-half) behind the lines he always put a small pot of linseed oil (or tung oil, whatever he was given) on a heater so as to keep it warm and handy to slather GI's gunstocks with when said M1's, Springfields, tommy guns, etc. were presented for repairs.

go get a newer dated tru-oil can and throw the old other tru-0il can away .

the last time i used Linspeed oil was about 6 or 7 years ago. i was redoing a '98 Mauser with a black walnut stock. i was on coat 6 or 7 when i hung the stock up. a week later, the pistol grip area or the small of the stock was gummy. i said i'll wait a week more to let it dry. a week later, it was still gummy. what i did is i put out on a coat of Linspeed when the stock was wet with the oil. it will NEVER dry. so i Citri Striped the stock and that is when i bought Minwax Antique Oil. to protect the finish, i use 2 or 3 coats of Polyurethane Oil/mineral spirits (3:1). i still have Linspeed Oil sitting on my basement shelf.

PA weather can do that. my home is in PA. in the early 2000s, i was one of those guys who sat out in the rain the first day. me and my oldest son (he was 13 or 14 years old) in the rain. my dad (RIP) said "Fudge that" and he went to sleep in the truck. we stayed in the woods until around 2pm (we had a tree umbrella that was good for 1 person) when my son said he had enuff of not seeing deer. i agreed with him and then we packed up and went to the truck. i was wet all over, but my son was only half wet, his legs). my dad was still sleeping.

As an aside, back 50 Years or so a common antique finishing fake involved mixing oils and oil finishes in heavy coats. First several coats were oil and heavy. Then several coats of an oil finish on that. If you did not know which would work best you just kept guessing and applying more and different coats. A couple months later you would have a smooth surface with internal alligator marks. Within 10 to 20 years or so the finish would finally fully cure and the marks would disappear.

No Linspeed for me since the ‘50’s. Didn’t like it much back then. Tried it, moved on. Tru-Oil became my main finish, used it for years.

DF

Dilute it a fair bit with mineral spirits or pure lemon oil.