Hello,
Recently purchased older, but as new subject rifle and the stock is I assume walnut, but as I am sure many of you have seen before, the finish is more of an orange/buttescotch in color than a brown walnut appearance. Question is has anyone stripped the stocks and refinished and found that the wood is actually walnut or is it some European wood that simply does not have the look of walnut?? If not true walnut will replace stock entirely. All help or suggestions appreciated.

martin

Earlier this year I stripped down the finishing of my Interarms Mark X in 30-06 and couldn´t found out what kind the wood is, although I´m not a wood specialist. Wood color is clear as I remember.

Later when I arrive home I´ll take photos of the still unfinished wood and post them. Maybe both rifles has the same wood and someone could help determine what type is.

Hello errege,
Thanks for the response. Look forward to your photos. I have had some success over the years w/ quality stains blended with Windsor Newton oil pigments and can go that route if need be to achieve the color desired, but curious to see what the raw wood actually is/looks like.

Thanks,

martin

they're birch heart. the heartwood of birch is slightly brown and commonly used in stocking making. there are no " truth in advertising" regulations pertinant to what kind of wood is sold as what kind of wood. almost every manufacturer of wood products does this. a little "walnut" stain on a birch stick and it can be sold as "walnut", leagally.all that has to be done is to be able to prove you put a "walnut" stain on the wood.

Hello merlinron,
OK, thanks for the info. I'll most likely strip it clean, remove the forend tip, pistol grip, butt plate, white line spacers and work up a nice wine/maroon dark finish for it. I may well experiment w/ placing the stock in a VPI system (Vacum,Pressure,Inection tank w/ resin as used in electric motor repairs)to give it near a wine/red appearance and total resistance to weather. Did this on a 40X stock some years ago and adds about a pound in weight, but can say it is definitely stable.

wow, it soaked up a pound of resin, that's allot. i just epoxied a stack of very curly, 3/16" thick, big leaf maple laminations together to make up a stock for one of my projects.......i know, i know, maple....yech!.... but i gotta try one light colored stock just to have one. i'll probably die it some shade of reddish-brown to get the looks of the pre-64 winnies.... i don't think i want to leave it totally maple white. i've read that pilkington's red (brownell's) does pretty good.
VPI system.... never gave that a though, i have a buddy whose dad is a retired elec. engineer for WPS and retired from the navy as same. he might know where i could get that done locally....light bulb is on.. thanks, i was wondering how it could be done!!. wonder what kind of beer he likes????

what they usually do is say something like ,
" genuine walnut finish ".
Which can be true,some oil finishes use walnut juice (tannic acid)to make the color of their stain.
If you have any walnut trees in your area,you know that your hands get a nice brown stain from handling the fallen nuts in the husk.
see the pic from wikipedia

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi...00_black_walnuts.jpg

true, but they don't don't have to mention,"finish" at all. just document in production records that a known walnut stain was used and it's good to go. i have a fairly expensive bedroom set that was sold as cherry, but it is soft maple with a very well applied classicly dark cherry stain. i shudder to think what it would have cost if it were really cherry.... bad thing is that i told my wife when we were looking at it that i'd build us a set and she really liked this one so.....(i do know when to look the other way!!)

merlinron,
First one I did was concerned that the baking process might flame/burn the wood, but worked ok. As we all know, wood has high content of water and once that is removed or a great deal of it, then the resin impregnated into the wood, makes for a very durable piece of wood.
The old 40X Rangemaster stock is of walnut, but don't know how the birch?? will react to the heat. I will probably do this process in a couple weeks and let you know how it turned out. Take care,

martin

as far as i know, all the commercially available laminatedstocks are actually made of birch. even the ones that are more or less walnut looking, so you shouldn't have any problems in the vaccum machine.
for color, you might might want to look into "analine dies" more permanent and will color wood like birch much better than any oil based die. there might also be issues with what ever you use to impregnate the wood should you use a oil or mineral based die/stain. analines are alchahol based... carries the color in and then evaporates, leaving no detrimental residue. they are also compatable with epeoxy as a color add-in. i used a dark brown on the stock mentioned above to give the laminations some visual definition. pretty much the industry standard for coloring wood these days. they come as a powder that you mix with plain old rubbing alky. 100's of colors and cheap..... mix and match till you get the color/shade you want. they are available from
"Rockler.com", a woodworking supplier.

Here the photos of my stripped down Interarms Mark X. I don´t know if it could be determinated from which wood the stock it is made by just looking at the grain. Hopefuly this could reveal something.

Birch would be my first guess.I have seen alot of it,as I have been making cabinets for awhile and have used it quite a few times.

take a dull dremel tool bit, shove in the barrel channel till in snubs,so it good and hot..... take a whiff of the smoke......
let's see, i got almost thirty years building furniture and cabinets and another guy with the same experience says the same thing.....might be birch!
all "smart-assing" aside, in the industry, birch is also called " white walnut" just like butternut is called "poor-man's walnut".
birch is used so much in commercial woodwork it's not funny. it's reasonably hard, it machines great, is easy on tooling, sands well to a nice surface, it's close grained and not too pourous so finnish production time is short. when dried right it's not real fussy about storage conditions, which means it's also fairly stable. it's real unifirm in color from region to region so there's very little stain shade adjustment from lumber batch to lumber batch,it's neutral color gives true stain-shade results and it's close grain allows a quick, good finish when spraying laquer/ or poly.BTW, if interarms advertised an "oil finish" it's because they sprayed an oil-based poly on the stocks. it's great wood for stocks, ......except for the fact that it's not walnut.

Errege,
Thanks for the photos. Your stock wood looks just like mine. I have couple nice walnut blanks, inletted only, been keeping for some project and if my effort to alter/refinish, etc. the current stock, then I will replace it.
Another stock project is just what I needed!!
Again, thanks,

martin