Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Critique my stock- finishing / weatherizing plan

I've got a CZ 550 in 9.3x62 that has a very nice stock, but CZ chose to hide the grain under a terribly dark finish. My plan is to strip this and replace it with hand- rubbed tru- oil. While I'm at it I intend to seal the barrel channel with spar varnish along with sealing the wood underneath the recoil pad.

Here's my plan:

1. Strip existing finish with citri- strip, using very fine stripping pad (with checkering taped off) then using a tooth- brush inside the checkering.

2. Citri- strip recommends neutralizing with water, after doing this I would very lightly sand the stock to remove any whiskers. Then I would remove as much of the dust as possible.

3. Rather than wet sand and allow slurry to get into the pores; I would cut the tru- oil %50 with paint- thinner and then put as many coats as possible until the wood will absorb no more. After that last coat dries, I would hit the finish with 0000 steel wool (wiping down after each application with a cloth to remove any steel particles) and then put another coat on. Repeat around 20 times or until I'm satisfied.

Am I missing anything? I've read most of the threads on stock finishing and found them very informative; I've put together this plan mainly because it is simple, straight- forward, and worked on a big slab of figured walnut I'm now using as a desk. Here's a picture.



And here's the gun:

I would say you did a mighty fine job. It does show some good figure/grain.

Several things should be changed in your plan... Do not ever thin finish unless absolutely forced to. Warm the stock to drop the viscosity of the finish. Solvents leave big pores in the finish which water vapor gets through readily.

Steel wool is a bad thing on anything that will see weather. You only think you get all the rustable particles off... Bri-Tex pads have obviated steel wool.

There should be little need to sand between coats. Apply fresh Tru-Oil heavily, let sit for about 10-15 minutes and wipe very dry with a clean cloth. Coats can be applied as frequently as you wish.

Messing with the checkering in any way MAY cause you a ton of grief. Unless it is glaring I would not do anything more than taping it off. If it is glaring repointing might do what you want.
art

So I should leave the checkering taped off throughout the stripping and refinishing?

Would a hair drier work alright for warming the stock? About how warm should it be?

Thanks for the tip on the thinner; it worked well on the desktop that I did but that won't see any sustained moisture, just the occasional coffee spill...

I generally do not actually tape off the checkering, I just tread carefully...

Heat guns and hairdriers work fine... About 110* is as hot as most folks can touch and that is where I like it.

That is a pretty piece of wood.
art

My opinion varies a bit from Sitka's on the use of solvents and thinning. I feel it's fine for the first couple sealing layers if one is not in hurry up mode. I've cut my Tru or Tung Oil to half and half and brushed on the first layer over all surfaces continuously for 1 hour. Wipe clean. Let dry by my wood stove for 2 full weeks. Repeat again applying continuously for 1/2 hour, wipe or rub nearly dry. Let dry for another 2 weeks. There after I rub in a couple coats of oil, 1 on Sat and the second on Sun. Let dry for 1 week. Do this 2 times and sand almost back to wood surface with 300 grit. Reinstall butt plate or recoil pad. Always use sanding blocks except in the tightest of spots. Takes about 1 to 1.5 hours to sand one down as we do not want to get heavy handed. Repeat the oiling process with another week of drying and sand smooth with 600 grit. I keep this up (800 & 1000)until I finally sand with 1200 grit. Pores should be completely filled at the end of the 800 grit sanding. A couple more layers and one will have a glass smooth finish. Add a few more ultra thin layers for depth. After the last couple of weeks of drying time, rub in and buff out a final layer of Johnsons paste wax on ALL surfaces. The extended drying times assure that one is sanding a very dry product. If one finds a gummy residue rather than dust with sanding, the product needs more drying. An extended project will yield excellence. A hurry up project will reflect just that. I just did a 600 grit sanding and added a layer to stock just before supper. It's already looking good enough that most folks would quit. Relax and be very patient. This should be a labor of love, not work. 1Minute

Sitka: So, general rule is not to touch the checkering? Wouldn't that leave the checkered areas looking as they do now with the rest of the stock in a different finish?

1minute: I've got all summer to refinish this stock, and a spare room where it can dry by itself. No hurry here; I've got other guns to play with...

Sitka's advice is good. You can heat the finish too, wrapping a heating blanket set on high around the can works well. I would just change two things. I would just finish the barrel channel the same as the rest of the stock, theres no advantage I can see that spar varnish would offer over tru-oil. The other thing I would do differently is stripping, I would skip the citristrip, I don't put water on any wood I'm going to finish. I would use something with methylene chloride and rinse with denatured alcohol. I would strip the checkering too, I think leaving it is asking for problems, and its no big deal to finish it with tru-oil. Just apply the tru-oil to the checkering with the rest of the stock and scrub it out with a fine nylon brush before you wipe the finish down. The wood seems to be nicely figured, you could stain it to bring more of the figure out, you seem like you would like that. good luck Tim

1minute
Tests show all thinners compromise the finish. The thinners are used to make the finish easier to apply. Thinners do almost nothing to "drive the finish deeper" as many claim. The wood acts as a filter and only the solvents get deeper.

Waiting to allow coats of finish to dry hard is not best for an oil finish. The new oil needs to find uncured molecule tails to bind to for best adhesion. If they are well-cured the coats do not cohere as well, which in effect causes layers in the finish with reflective surfaces, killing luster. There is no need to allow long curing between coats to enhance sandibility as there should be almost no sanding between coats. Coats should be very thin.

"Do this 2 times and sand almost back to wood surface with 300 grit"
If you are sanding an oil finish with 300 grit something is terribly wrong. I understand what you are trying to do, but once you go to 300 you need to go back through the entire process of stepping through all the stages again. Also, 300 grit is coarse enough to get through a couple coats of oil fast!

Oil is a very forgiving finish, so making a few test blocks to compare different methods is pretty easy. It will amaze you to see how different the finishes will look.

Then there is the ugly face of reality... No matter what or how you do it all oil-finished wood will telegraph pores eventually because the oil will shrink as it completes curing, which can take years. Epoxy sealer under the oil prevents that, as do various fillers. I do not like the fillers, at all.
art

I apply a couple of coats of Epifanes Spar Varnish, sand with 320-400-600 grit right down to the wood. Repeat if necessary until the pores are filled. Proceed with whatever oil finsh I'm using at the moment. (Currently a home blend of pure tung oil, spar varnish & mineral spirits) Gunstocks I did back in the 80's still look like a million bucks.

I would caution the use of epoxy as a sealer. Epoxy has no UV protective qualities. We in the marine industry learned that lesson the hard way. West System 207 has some UV additives, is thinner in viscocity, and is intended for use as a sealer coat. Most proffesional bright-work guys (varnishers) I know start out with unthinned varnish on a surface sanded to 120-grit, working through finer grits as the finish builds. Starting with epoxy is passe with that crowd. Doesn't seem to help and skipping it saves a lot of expense, time and labor. The quality of the varnish (percentage of solids therein) is much more important.

gnoahhh
Huge difference between a brightwork finish in constant sun and a stock that spends much of its time indoors. Finish should match the task and stability is THE issue with stock finishes, IMO.

A single coat of epoxy is no more trying to apply than multiple coats of spar varnish sanded back t bare wood.

Have worked with a numbe rof finishes like you describe and none is particularly great at actually sealing wood. Oil is very hygroscopic, even when well cured. Most stocks do not need the kind of protection epoxy gives, but little else comes close.

The quality of the solids is as important as the quantity in many cases, also. Look how some will even claim silica as a solid...
art

Oh boy here we go again Art you have a whole new crop of guys to train in the virtues of epoxy.
I for one am an Art epoxy convert....simply put nothing works as well on a walnut stock to protect it from weather than the Art method.
I have proof positive that Arts system works just fine. I hunt the wettest ground in America out side of South East Alaska. A week long hunt that may rain 24/7 for a week nonstop. My stocks take it like they were ducks. I use blued guns treated with Fluid Film, no rust no worries A good scope like a leupold is imparitive.
What did we do before plastic and stainless steel?

Bullwnkl.

Can't say that this has been my experience. Quite the contrary actually. But maybe it's just me, or maybe it's the specific finishes that I use.



Unless of course it's english - I have a handful of english guns that are 120-180 yrs old. For some reason, they don't do this shrink thing and for sure they don't use epoxy. That is not to say that epoxy is bad stuff, but oil-based varishes from the mid 19th century are still going strong on my rifles and shotguns. I guess our mileage may differ, meanwhile my guns have plenty of miles on them.

Brent

Brent
Old guns do not always telegraph pores... as new ones do not always either, because of the quality of the wood. Very tight wood will not have pores that will telegraph.
art

Aye, I can believe that wood quality could matter. I can't say that I can exactly see the difference, but that's not exactly a scientific analysis either.

Brent

BrentD: I'll stick to my watered down finish for the first couple of layers because it seems to work for me. Most folks though will only put in 5 or 10 minutes with their first gooey applications and feel that things really got soaked up. I think a good many failures in stock sealing are due to not enough focus in the areas where wood and metal mesh. Seems to be an out of sight out of mind thing. Water should bead just as well on the inner portions of a stock as it does on the exterior. Stocks on many factory rifles have those areas looking like they just came off a rip saw with splintered wood sticking out everywhere around the action, magazine well and barrel channel. Those splinters are certainly pipelines for moisture as they have a lot of brittle surface area. A stock inletted with good sharp chisels, gouges, and scrapers will have none of that. Quality does cost money or time though, and most folks want off the shelf cheap, and won't put any further work into a unit.

Second is really working to get a complete fill of the pores. The pore sealing thing is the reason I go through the application of so many layers and sanding. Depending on the wood, it may take as few as 2 and as many as 8 layers with sanding in between to get the pores filled and smoothed over. It looks like my present project is going to be one of those 8 layer deals. Beautiful wood, but a lot of depth to some of the pores. Layers 5 and 6 went on this weekend, pores are about 98% filled now with only 8 or 10 still showing, and layers 7 and 8 will go on in another 2 weeks. A light but thorough sanding, and a couple more ultra thin coats and it should be near perfect. A month or so of drying after that and some paste wax should wrap it up. Nothing says I can't go shoot it in the mean time though. Will post a photo when it's done.

Third, I don't own any stocks with a lot or burl, but my readings suggest their mix of grain directions and variable density makes them terribly hard to seal over the long run. The wood seems to shrink/swell and flex in so many directions that minute cracks in the finish are inevitable.

Lastly, a lot of factory wood is not dried sufficently before working. It's very dry where I live here in eastern Oregon, and the stock on the last Mark V Weatherby I brought home kept moving for another 2.5 years. I had to float and reseal that unit 3 times before it stayed put. Have the same issue with furniture here too. Everything comes loose in about 1 or 2 years and has to be reseated and glued. Take care, 1Minute

Theres a lot of conflicting opinions here. It seems some of this is comparing apples to oranges. Part of the problem is the word "oil", someone says this about oil, someone else says that about oil, and they're both right because they're talking about 2 different products and nobody is being real specific. You can say oil and be talking about raw oil (tung or linseed), boiled oil (raw linseed with heavy metal driers), teak oil (could be mineral oil, or mineral oil and wax, or oil and varnish), wiping varnish (heavily thinned varnish sold as oil), Danish oil (a thinned oil and varnish blend), or polymerized oil (tung or linseed, I believe Tru-oil is this, although it cures so fast I think they've added something to it). Performance of these products is similarly all over the place. Thats neither good nor bad, it just depends on what you want it to do. I don't think anybody's finishing methods are wrong either, if you've done it before and you're pleased with the results, then you're doing something right.

The important thing is what sort of use your firearm will get. A gun thats staying in the house and only going out in nice weather can be finished with anything - shellac, lacquer, oil, it doesn't matter. A gun that might see some bad weather would probably be best done in Tru-oil, if you want an oil finish. In terms of performance, it can almost be considered a straight varnish, its nothing like oil. A gun that will see a lot of water would undoubtedly be best done in Art's epoxy finish.

A few additional thoughts, if anyone is still reading this. I've never seen a finish hurt by thinning it, it just changes the application method slightly, usually to the better. I've never seen any benefit to applying oils heavily if you have to wipe them off, you just end up soaking rags with oil. Manufacturers tell you to do this for the same reason they tell you not to use thinners, they want you to use as much of their product as possible. If I were making a wiping blend, I would skip the spar varnish and use a tabletop varnish. Wiping blends cure softer than straight varnish because of the oil, and spar varnish cures softer than tabletop varnish because theres more oil in it. You're better off with a harder finish, but if you're happy with the spar varnish blend stay with it. One thing I would not do is apply a coat of oil over an uncured coat to aid adhesion.Adhesion is normally only a problem with varnish, which is why you should scuff sand between coats, this creates a mechanical bond that the varnish needs. Oils, for whatever reason, adhere well to each other, even when the bottom coats have cured. Unlike evaporative finishes (shellac and lacquer) which dry from the bottom up, oils "cure", oxidize, from the top down. Applying coat after coat of oil over uncured coats leaves you with a heavy coat of uncured oil. Thats probably why some guns finished with oil take years to cure and the finish shrinks into the pores. Once the finish is cured it shouldn't shrink, so if you let each individual coat cure, once the pores are filled, they should stay that way. One other thing to remember if you're using a product with linseed oil in it, is that it will darken wood over time, if you want to avoid the stock getting darker, choose a product made from tung oil.

I think it's sort of interesting to see so many opinions about the one and only way to finish a rifle stock. Almost always there is a declaration of what constitutes a manly "working rifle" finish for manly rifles in places like Alaska where the water is wetter than anywhere else. (Though, I often wonder how much wetter the panhandle of AK can be relative to the Tres Peidras when the clouds roll in for a 5 day visit of forming snow and rain at eyelevel rather than simply dumping it from above; or, for that matter, in any other place where a hunter finds himself locked into a weather pattern that could make only Poseidon feel comfortable.)

A rifle with anything other than synthetic everything is often relegated for snickering at, as they must of course, be just house rifles of one sort or another - safe queens, wall hangers, or the worst of the bunch - target rifles. It has been my experience, however that rifles that are shot weekly in long hard matches by dedicated Schuetzen competitors are pretty well used, have well worn finishes, that are well tested by sweat, solvents, lubes, fouling, not to mention rain and humidity in long matches in whatever weather happens to present itself. Look at the grips of any 19th century Schuetzen rifle still in operation today and then at the grip of a modern hunting rifle for comparsions of wear and tear on a gun finish.

But range rifles generally do fail to suffer in the abuse department like so many "two-trips to the range and a week in a tent" rifles that pass for hunting rifles. For my money, if you can avoid abusing your rifle, you can take a wood stocked, oil-finished, blued steel rifle anywhere and expect it to last a couple of lifetimes if you just provide it with a modicum of care. Alaska and the PNW accepted of course - where the weather is wetter than water.

And then there is an aborhance for finishes that are shiny. Real hunters would NEVER use anything but a matt finish. Although most of the finishes I see on rifles these days are dull to the point of being barely able to see that there there little figure in the wood to show off anyway. I suppose Stephen Dodd Hughes said it as well as anyone in his three-part article on stock finishing, "I've come to the conclusion that the ultimate stock finish should be “bulletproof," low-gloss; waterproof; quick-drying; easy to apply; non-messy; able to be applied at the kitchen table; able to be applied without removing the metal; natural oil; dust-resistant; easy to repair; scratch-resistant; grain-filling; available at the hardware store; capable of lasting a lifetime; synthetic red-toned built up; in the wood; flawless; gloss; semi-glass; and of course, hand-rubbed. All without requiring too much work."

Be that as it may, here are a couple rifles that are interesting to me. One was made by Joseph Lang early in his career in the mid-to-late 1820s. Unforutnately, the photo I have handy does little to show the wood. To the best of my knowledge, it has never been retouched like so many english guns, but has been used a fair bit if the dings and scratches are to be read. It was done with some sort of varnish/oil concoction known only to the mad chemists of London's gun maker's row.

The next picture is one of my own, prior to action coloring and checkering. It done with Permalyn and an oil/spar varnish/turpentine concotion of my own making (equal ratios of each). It gets used more than any hunting rifle, in any kind of weather.

Anyway, shoot what you like, finish it with what you wish and, if you are someone who takes just a little bit of care for your tools, you will probably be successfull anywhere (except in Alaska :)).

confused
Sorry, but much of your post is in error on the specifics of what an oil finish is and what oil is.

There are two primary oils used almost exclusively for finish, tung and linseed. They can be interchanged with almost total impunity if they have been treated the same. All differences between the two are related to manufacturers' additives. "Boiled linseed oil" is often tung and vice versa.

Boiled linseed oil no longer uses heavy metal driers and has not used them for decades. Oils polymerize (molecules link together in the presence of oxygen or other catalyst or initiator) when heated to the smoking point which was how boiled linseed was originally made. Japan drier is one of the better known early driers. The Japan drier of today is a far cry from the original heavy metal versions.

Stock finishes such as Tru-Oil are oleoresinous (oil and resin based) varnishes and cure first by the evaporation of solvents and then the polymerization of the oil. Adding solvents thins the finish but the surface films form very fast and resist the evaporation of the trapped solvents. Adding slow evaporators like mineral spirits compounds the problem and under magnification the surface will show wrinkles. The wrinkles will flatten as the polymerization continues to tug the surface film taut.

Teak oil is tung or linseed with additives to suit the application such as UV inhibitors and solvents designed to reduce teak's resistance to and interference with drying oils. Most mixtures are actually varnishes and mineral oil does not polymerize.

Oils cure very slowly. Even a month is far from a total cure. As oils continue to cure they shrink. This will continue for years, though very slowly.

Oil is far from waterproof. It actually resists atmospheric water more poorly than bare wood. It is easy to test this for yourself with a couple blocks of wood and a powder scale.

You are obviously welcome to use whatever methods you wish, but you rae completely incorrect on two key points, time between coats affecting adhesion and not wiping oils dry. There is a reason it has been done this way for so long.

I could go on, but will stop.
art

Brent
Nice rifle!

I have stated many times that epoxy is not the easiest finish to apply and is probably not needed in most cases. But the simple fact is the finish is as waterproof as it gets and significantly more so than any oil or varnish system. Only superglue finishes test as well for waterproof.

As to Ak's weather, my son and I just spent a week on Kodiak bear hunting in horrible weather. Our rifles spent the winter in bone dry conditions followed by a week in high 90%R.H. An improperly sealed stock would absorb lots of water in that week.
art
Smilies noted and neither took nor intended any offense.