I am trying to fix this for someone:

Long story short, a fancy shotgun stock absorbed water and swelled a bit on the butt end. This was a year ago. It has since shrunk back to its normal size as far as I can tell without cracking or warping. It needs to be refinished and I am wondering if I should continue to wait, or am I good to go after a year? I know green wood from a tree takes many years to dry out unless kiln dried....

Thanks for your help.

A year should be plenty. Dry lumber, which a stock basically is, really doesn't soak up water like a sponge.

Part of the long story involves high temperature and water. It sucked up enough water to become larger than the butt plate about 1/16" all the way around. Its seems to have shrunk back to normal after a year now.

I had several stocks that got wet in a storage area flood. I refinished them after about a year and have had no issues with them.

Refinish and remember to seal all surfaces of the stock...inside and out... as well.

What Dennis said is correct. Fill the end grain of the butt stock with finish. That is the "soda straw" for moisture uptake.

Had an 870 that was in a police car for 3 days under water.
It sat in their office for another week before i saw it.
The butt stock was twice normal size and the forend was of a plastic type.
After taking it off,cleaning and rebluing the metal,the stock came back to near normal size.
I waited fro about 1 year just to be sure it had dried out all the way and re finished and waxed ti up.
This was about 9 or 10 years ago and all is still well.

Here is one I fixed after the flood waited a yr.

I bet you were about sick when you discovered that Paul.
Makes me ill just looking at it.
Great job refinishing it.

quote:

I bet you were about sick when you discovered that Paul

Sick doesn't cover it. I had about 25 rifles/shotguns wrapped and stored in boxes in my safe in storage when we moved out from Houston. The unit flooded and I ended up with about 10" of water in the safe. So half had stock issues and the other have had the muzzle pointed down. So some barrels were ok if they had enough oil. Several were reblued a couple I simply sold damage as is. Several like this one I refinished and got away with it.

Not a great day as we opened the storage and saw about 1/2 of everything we owned was wet and or ruined.

Just my kinky comment, as usual...

I seal the butt end and barrel channels of my stocks with thinned Acraglas. Does a lot better job of sealing than anything else I've found.

I've also finished the whole outside surface of a few laminated varmint rifle stocks that way. Hard as the Devil to do, but lasts almost forever with no scratches from use in the field.

Thanks for the reply's everyone! It sounds like I am good to go ahead and start refinishing.

Nice looking Rifle Paul, I am glad it was fixable.