How do you guys recommend stripping a stained and tru-oil finished stock down to bare wood? The more I think about and look at it, the more I hate the stain that I put on it. Time for a change. Do you use some kind of chemical stripper or just go at it with a piece of sandpaper and a block?

stripper will remove the surface finish. However about the only way to remove what has soaked into the pores is to sand it. You will need to sand it to remove the stain anyway.

You might want to try the two part wood bleach sold at Home Despot to lift out the stain.

It will raise the grain quite a bit though...

I would wet sand with 320 grit. Use what you got as a filler. Cut just to the wood and stop. Leave some in the grain. This is a big head start.

The fastest way to strip a stock is to take a very sharp knife of good quality (one that holds a good edge) and scrape the finish off. I can do this to a bolt action stock, and I am ready for sand paper in 5 minuts. You'll be suprised how precise it can be too.

I am not sure where I read it, Maybe in Rifle Magazine, where Raechel Wells talked about using "Easy Off" oven cleaner to remove the old finish.

Blue

I've just been over on http://surplusrifle.com/ looking at (among other things) his pictorial on refinishing milsurp stocks, starting by stripping with oven cleaner.

Won't using oven cleaner damage the wood fibers something awful?

Well, Raechel Wells is the Wife of Fred Wells, who makes some of the finest Mauser actions there are. So, I would imagine that she knows what she is doing. I guess if I were going to try it I would try it on a piece of scrap wood or a very small portion of the stock you are refinishing first to see what happens, and then if it works go ahead and use it.

Blue

I've used oven cleaner on old stocks to help remove the years of oil and grime. I believe that is why they start with that on an old Mauser. Can't say how good it would be as a finish remover. The bleach might help. I've also used a heat gun to help cook some of the old finish and stain out of old furniture. Heavy applications of solvents will get some of the stain out. But, to get all the color out you are going to have to sand below the penetration level.

Lye-based oven cleaner isn't corrosive to steel, but sodium hpochlorite bleach and its salt residue are about as corrosive as it gets. You'd never get all the salt back out of the stock.

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Mauser, maybe I just don't understand all of the dynamics here, but I've seen this post from you in a few places. Do you need a hobby?? I haven't seen anything offensive, other than you jumping around like a mad woman on a pogo stick.

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For stain you'll eventually need to sand it out, unless you use the 1930's method of boiling in gasoline! (Don't ask me, they used that way to degrease also. Personally I think it would be safer to get a job painting the radium on watch faces) Sometimes it is simpler/easier to just lighten the stain up a little rather than removing it completely, so think about whether or not you could live with a lighter shade of what you have.