1st of all, let me make it clear that I am in no way complaining about the quality of the wood that this stock was made from.

What I am going to tell you about are my trials & tribulations getting a nice even stain job on the stock.

I have built 7 custom muzzleloaders "from the block", most of them maple, 1 from cherry & 1 from black walnut. I have also done a few "kit" guns & finished/re-finished several black walnut stocks on centerfire shotguns & rifles.

This epic struggle was my 1st attempt @ finishing a stock made of english walnut.

In the past I have used chromic acid to darken the maple stocks I have worked with. The Cherry needed no stain & I have always used Birchwood Casey water based walnut stain on the black walnut stocks I have finished.

This time around I wanted to add some red to the rather bland color of the english walnut. The 1st attempt, I used Pilkington's Red spirit stain.

Things were looking pretty good @ the start. After doing some build-up W/Tru-Oil I had a nice red color albeit W/O the grain contrast I would have liked. Everything started going awry when I started doing the final thin coats of Tru-Oil.

On my final finish coats I like to vigorously rub in the Tru-Oil until my hand get warm/hot & then follow up quickly by buffing the oil to acheive a microscopic build-up of layers. I would allow ample drying time between coats.

That's when the troubles began!

When I would buff the coats of still undried Tru-Oil, I could see red on my buffing cloth! How could Tru-Oil lift a xylol based stain?

I tried to touch up the stain, but soon wound up W/a blotchy mess. I stripped the finish down to bare wood & started over.

Phase 2:

Since I had not been happy W/the somewhat soft finish of the Tru-Oil I opted to go W/Minwax Antique Oil Finish.



I had found some posts on this forum reccomending this product. Since I suspected that some of my previous stain lifting problem came from mixing products from different manufacturers, I decided to use Minwax gel stain in a mahogany color to add some red to the english walnut.

Another blotchy mess! The stain didn't lift, but it did not penetrate the wood evenly either. I stripped the still green finish & tried another attempt W/the same products. Same dismal result.

Time to start from sqaure one W/something different!

Since I was happy W/the Minwax Antique Oil Finish, I used that product on the next attempt. What I did differently this time was to use my old standby, Birchwood Casey's water based walnut stain.

Bingo! I was pleased to find that the water based stain resulted in a bit more of a reddish cast on the english walnut compared to what it does on black walnut.

The water based stain held fast when coats of the Minwax oil finish was rubbed on & buffed out. Even after cutting back the oil to fill the pores, the water based stain still penetrated the spots that were rubbed through.

I'm very happy W/the nearly completed results. The color is even, the grain contrast is much better than W/the spirit stain & I like the hard, satin luster of the Minwax Antique Oil Finish.

Here are some PIX of the nearly finished stock.

Good job!

I've never been able to achieve good results with the Pilkingtn products, not any of them. Apparently I'm doing something wrong, so I quit using them 10 years ago.
Regards, Joe

Try oil of Alkanet next time you're doing an oil finish.

I bought a kit from Vintageguns.co.uk with the traditional oil and this alkanet stuff and will say that although the alkanet stinks, it colours the stock nicely and really brings up the contrast.

I also tried various stains but none of the seem to look as good as the proper thing.

Isn't Minwax Antique oil just a linseed product?

While several methods work, I have found this one to be quite effective: http://customgunandrifle.com/i...icle&id=15&Itemid=14

I have also used Pro Custom Oil very effectively. I believe you need an alcohol based stain on the English walnut after sealing. The great thing about stock finishing is all of them work sometimes and some become favorites. Experiment!

quote:

Originally posted by Magnum Hunter1:
Isn't Minwax Antique oil just a linseed product?

It has a hint of linseed smell, but it doesn't act like any linseed product I have used so far. I've used boiled Linseed oil, Linspeed & Tru-Oil. All of those act similarly, the Linsped being very close to boiled linseed oil, the Tru-Oil a bit less so.

The Min wax Antique Oil Finish tacks up very very fast, but once you buff off the excess (best done within 5 ninutes) it seems to take it's time drying/hardening from that point on.

It tacks up faster than Tru-Oil or Linspeed & much faster than boiled linseed oil. After buffing, it dries more like boiled linseed oil but after 24 hours, it's harder than woodpecker lips. It doesn't seem brittle though. Only time & some days spent thrashing through the cedar bottoms will tell how tuff it is.

So far I really like it. The sheen after buffing is very subtle & rich W/O being garish.

As far as the stain recommendations? I'm sticking to the Birwood Casey water based stains. I do want to try their new "Rusty Walnut" on the next stock. I especially want something to add a bit of red to black walnut.

The only reason I strayed from the BC water based stain is that their regular "Walnut" stain I had on the shelf tended to make black walnut a bit darker than i like. It worked out better on the engkish walnut.

Just personal preference, but you can avoid this problem entirely by just not using stain. I personally would never use one. The two things I love about walnut gunstocks are the grain and the subtle color variations that come out when finishing. Stain is detrimental to both these. I don't even like using sealer, since most of them contain fillers. I prefer to take the time to build up the clear finish. If a stock has sapwood, nothing can really save it except picking another blank. However, I always thought that variations in color in the figured wood actually enhanced the wood. I am stocking two rifle right now, one in a piece of walnut from turkey and one in a Paradox blank from northern california, and the color changes throughout the blank are incredible. Some people really don't like this, but I do. I like to let the wood stand on its own.