I have a nice Remmy '03 action I have slicked up a bit and polished the bejeezus out of with the intention of building a .35 Whelen for myself. Many moons ago, my hunting buddy's grandfather passed on and we were privvy to the cleaning out of the gun safe and an old rifle caught my eye. I still have not been able to shake the image, and while I don't want to duplicate it, I sure would like to incorporate a few ideas from it.

I am truly sorry there are no pics of this rifle, but I will try and do it justice. It was also an '03, G&H or clone from the '30s in .25-06. It had the classic G&H style stock, but in a fiddleback maple with rosewood (or maybe a dark red birch) forend tip. For maple this thing was as dark as some of the black walnut pre '64 Winnies I have seen. Beautiful reds and deep gold with dark brown combed in for effect.

The metal on the action and quarter rib along with the front sight hardware was color case hardened and the barrel itself was brown, like an old Parker shotgun. That brown barrel was one of the sticking points for me. I never saw the butt, unfortunately someone had left a lace up leather pad on it. There was a scope, old steel Weaver fixed 6 I believe.

Question for you stock masters out there: Every piece of maple I have seen for a stock blank is Uber blonde-How do I get those rich, deep reds, golds and browns? Someone once told me a torch pass was instrumental to "waking up" maple, but I have never tried it. I want to get an inexpensive slab of maple to experiment on, but any direction would help.

Thanx!
Big Rob

Go to Track of the Wolf site and read up on their stock finishes. I have used most types of stain treatments on maple and the acid will get you to the dark finish.

Its called a swiegie finish, not sure of the spelling..you use a torch and you need a plate or somekind made of metal to cover any sharp edges that burn easily..a little practice and your ready to go...the maple is hard and soft wood stacked, the soft wood will burn from brown to black, that is up to you..the hard wood is less suseptable to burning and you get rust to brown, knowing when to stop is the trick..I have done a couple of muzzle loaders and the result is nice...

Another option is using clothes dye, scarlet on the finished sanded raw wood, then finish it in high gloss with Linseed and dryers, Linspeed or Burchwood Caseys, all high gloss finishes, it comes out a reddish brown..very pretty.

Ray, that is exactly what I was after, thanx. I'll look into this style some more, but from what I have been told, this is the technique I am after. I'll keep everyone (who cares) posted.

Aqua fortis from Track of the Wolf is what you want.

http://www.trackofthewolf.com/...tis/instructions.pdf

After reading up on both techniques, I will probably try the Aquafortis and see where that gets me. At least this will be my rifle to test and not a customers Thanx everyone for their input, when I start tooling around with it I'll make a post with pics showing my trials and tribulations!

I had to think twice before posting this because it sounds so ridiculous, but it saw a stock on a shotgun done with wax boot polish and the result was outstanding. One would have to experiment a bit with different makes of polish on a separate piece of wood I guess. The one I saw was a baikel shotgun with a really bland piece of wood. The Polish was kiwi wax brown polish. It drew into the grain and made a nice water resistant finish and the wood looked really expensive after

I actually have used the shoe polish trick to highlight grain where there is no color separation. Works well on birch (I have a Baikel, not saying it's birch, but it is a butt ugly piece of walnut ). Did that treatment on a Boyd's Garand or M1A stock years ago on some oldtimers advice and it made a plain jane Boyd's beater into a nice presentation style stock. It's apparently some military drill corps trick from way back.

So I have decided. I have a Remington '03 action with milled bottom metal along with a banded front sight, express rear and barrel band swivel to be color case hardened, a Lilja .358 barrel to be finished brown and a blank I just picked with a nice bit of fiddleback to be "Aquafortis"ed. I have an old Weaver steel tube 3-9x lying around in good shape, maybe Redfield style turn in bases? I'm a sucker for the classics.

I'll start a build thread when I get rolling on it! Thanx everyone for their input!