Refurbishing stock question

[louisvanhovell]

Today I'm enjoying refurbishing two of my air rifle stocks; BSA S10 and Spitfire. They come out of the factory with varnish, which I personally dislike because it always marks and scratches. So in with the paint remover, old bank card to scratch the varnish off, root stain and finally CCL gunstock conditioning oil. A highly satisfying business.

 

Now I'm thinking about doing some work on the stock of my .308 Heym as well. It was built around 1990. There are some light marks and dents that I would like to sand away and it would simply be nice to have a fresher looking and feeling piece of wood.

 

This process would be different from the varnished beech stocks that I've done today. The Heym stock is oiled walnut. Any advice on how to go about stripping and reconditioning/oiling would be most welcome.

 

In the manual of the CCL gunstock conditioning oil there is info on this topic. They have various products that I might need to get;

- CCL gunstock finish & lacquer remover. I don't think I would need this for my oiled stock

- then wetting and drying the surface to bring up the grain fibres

- then sanding with gradually finer grades of abrasive paper, wetting and drying the surface between each sanding down

- then, if the pores of the

 

I guess I have in a way answered my own question, but I'm sure there will be various ways and opinions.

 

Many thanks, Louis

 

[winnie&bezza]

Fine wire wool and meths to strip it off. When I made my stock for my air rifle I didn't finish it with a gunstock finish as I wanted something hardier so I used the osmo polyx hardwax oil in satin. Just 3 coats and took 3 days. Still used alkanut oil to bring out the grain first. People would disagree but I was happy. This is the stock.

[steve d]

Kin ell, you made that?

 

How did you do the stippling on the grip?

[wymberley]

Kin ell, you made that?

 

How did you do the stippling on the grip?

As above.

[winnie&bezza]

I don't want to derail thread with my post as I was just giving Louis an option so I won't go into details. I posted a thread on my process of making it and it's call 'started stock' if you want to look through it. Cheers

[steve d]

Cheers, will have a gander

[welshwarrior]

Main advice if you managed to do the whole lot in a day you've missed a lot of stages out.

[louisvanhovell]

Thanks for the replies/advice. That's a lovely stock you've made there, winnie&bezza.

Welshwarrior, that's good honest advice. I know, stock finishing takes a lot of time when you do it properly.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not ready with my S10 and Spitfire stocks yet. But anything is better than the varnish that they had, and my aim is to get a functional weather resistant finish, nothing fancy.

It's a different thing with the Heym stock: that needs to become as good as possible, as I'll probably (try to...) sell it in order to help funding a t/h stock for it.

Have thoroughly rubbed it with surgical spirit from my vet's car yesterday, a lot of black grease came off. Will have to try to iron many (small) scratches and dents out, and also get more of the black oil deposits out around the bolt area. Then sanding and wetting, filling, oiling. We'll see. It's a learning process, I intend to do more of this, and in a year's time I will probably look back and realise what an amateur I am/was haha. But you've gotta start somewhere and it's no fun having everything done by someone else.

Cheers