Sanded in the first coat. the sap wood is a sponge.

I think it will finish out quite nicely.

Design and wood grain is awesome. You are headed to a beautiful gun stock. Iron sights?
Please tell me what oil you are using for the finish. Thanks, Brian

Did you give thought to staining that sap?....(If no other blank was available)

It is velvet oil. I'm not good with colors. Here's what I was gonna try, a techy solution, but didn't. It's RGB and CMYB and hex color values.

CYMB is base 100
RGB is 255,255,255 value

Well...you "sneak up on the color" Don't try to make the correction all at once

rich, Velvet oil. Thanks. Brian

Wont the sapwood darken with age and mellow out the contrast anyway?

Beautiful.

quote:

Originally posted by theback40:
Wont the sapwood darken with age and mellow out the contrast anyway?

Never seen that happen..What's your experience?

On that one, I would have selectively fumed the white wood areas before applying any sealer or finish.

Ammonia. 25-30%.

Works well, but there is a knack to it. The tannin content varies, and it's difficult to pick the colour transformation until the finish goes on. Experience is the key, and offcuts from the stock help you learn.

It has worked really well for me for nearly 30 years, and it colours the wood deeper than checkering including a re-cut or three.

The below is a bit of a side-road to the thread but hopefully will be of use to someone:

Older trees tend to really narrow-up the white wood band in the last years of life. It also normally turns a rich honey colour very late in life.

It's possible to "colour a tree up" by killing it slowly over a few growing seasons, all the while taking precautions against, and watching for, insect damage. This reduces the width of the band and darkens the white to a deep honey if done well.

If I get a tree that has white wood: If I can, I store the log (bark on, well sealed, in the shade, sprayed against borer) until the white wood turns. If the log sprouts, I trim the shoots. A log that springs shoots tends to produce pin knots with very open cores - at least at the shoots and sometimes the pin knots in the whole log. The log must have NO rot or borer in it to do this. Do it too long and the heart will suffer. Get it just right and bingo. I err on the side of caution and have never had log degrade.

If I don't quite get it right, the white wood often turns honey the first few months after slabbing. That is a bummer, but better than losing heartwood. It is bummer because the damp white wood core still turns a dark honey, but in the meantime the drier outer "skin" will stay white/cream to 1/8" or so deep. If the tree is worth it to me, and I have the time, I coat the white wood to slow it's drying, ensuring it colours deeply ALL the way through.

I don't have much of a problem with soft, porous white wood down here, so the above is worthwhile.

NZ walnut is very, very variable due to genetic variation and growing conditions that vary wildly, generally the white wood is much more porous and much softer. Not often worth it IMO.

Mainland Oz, the trees grow much quicker, so are generally younger even at a big size and have much wider annular rings and generally a lot more white wood. Sometimes that white wood is harder than what I've seen in US or NZ blanks, and worth "colouring up". Often, it is not, IMO.

White wood will turn very slightly darker all on it's own even in a finished stock, but it can take many, many years (decades) and is variable.

Some suppliers steam logs, slabs or blanks to colour up the white wood but in doing so it bleeds the colours out of the heartwood and also affect how vivid both the colours and contrast are in the heartwood. An experienced eye will spot this but most stockers I know cannot pick it. The texture also suffers.

I speak of European walnut. I have only milled around 5-6 dozen Paradox trees and the above worked, but took longer and was more variable. They were supposedly the first to come to Oz (some rival orchardists dispute this) and came from the only orchard I ever touched (not irrigated and very fine walnut). These Paradox trees were also the youngest trees I touched by far at about 90 years. Paradox produces a lot of white walnut, and the heartwood colours up in "splotches" unlike a normal tree. But it has ALL been the hardest and toughest walnut I have milled and is damn fine big bore walnut in the deeper honeys. That is saying something with the reputation that Aussie walnut has for hardness. When it colours it is spectacular. When it doesn't, if it's a honey colour it's still spectacular due to the figure it holds. Bastogne I have milled much fewer trees, more colour, a little softer than Paradox and more porous than European or Paradox. I have avoided claro and black so cannot comment on those. Most of the European walnut trees I mill down here are either side of double that age. Locally the trees start dying of old age at 125-150 or so, and it's rare to strike a healthy "double ton" tree.

It's mighty interesting looking at annular ring spacings of of a suppliers blanks and photo galleries of said supplier, and doing the math on tree diamteters vs claimed ages.

Oh and if you ever see a horrid yellow stain in any walnut species, you know it hasn't been steamed (or perhaps poorly steamed). European walnut can get this yellowing, but Claro/Black seem to be worse for it. It's fkn ugly and looks shocking in a fresh job or planed blank. Leave it be, it takes a long time but it will turn a lovely golden brown and that adds welcome contrast. If you refinish the stock, the bright yellow will come back to haunt you. This is another reason folk steam walnut, it gets rid of the neon yellow but the medicine ain't worth the side effects IMO. Be patient and reap the long term colour gains.

Juglansregia, That is quite interesting. Brian

Duane,
Wood in sunlight, even coated seems to always mellow out. On anything, kitchen cabinets, furniture and such that has sapwood, over time the sunlight blends the colors.

I like the color, as is - but it will lighten over couple days.. I have a stock or two with sapwood and unless it's stark white, i usually like the contrast

How does one determine the proper size for a cheekpiece and additionally where exactly that cheekpiece goes?

did you see the before pics? I mounted the rifle to see where my face touched the stock. The cheekpiece was huge.

Bastogne and Paradox is the same thing, no? OK english vs Eurasia (turkey)

Paradox = A hybrid of our Northern California walnut with the common walnut of Eurasia

Bastogne = hybrid of English Walnut and California Claro Walnut,

quote:

Originally posted by theback40:
Duane,
Wood in sunlight, even coated seems to always mellow out. On anything, kitchen cabinets, furniture and such that has sapwood, over time the sunlight blends the colors.

Could be..I suspect the UV simply lightens the dark to make it appear to "mellow out"....But I reject sap blanks anyway so don't know outright

quote:

Originally posted by richj:
Bastogne and Paradox is the same thing, no? OK english vs Eurasia (turkey)

Paradox = A hybrid of our Northern California walnut with the common walnut of Eurasia

Bastogne = hybrid of English Walnut and California Claro Walnut,

Down here our nomenclature is different, at least among those I know:

Here we call Juglans nigra x Juglans regia Bastogne. I believe in the US it's known as Royal Walnut, but could be wrong.

We call Juglans hindsii x Juglans regia Paradox. Supposedly the paradox I milled came from Luther Burbank stock.

The European Walnut x Juglans californica walnut cross I have not ever milled to my knowledge. I know of a small stand of maybe 30 trees that is supposed to be this hybrid. I have seen wood from one of them and it was mindblowingly fancy but loud and different to "x nigra" or "x hindsii". Elvis walnut, not my taste, so I walked. The trees looked very different to "bastogne" or "paradox" and grew more slowly. It could be they were J. major x J.regia too, or something else entirely short of DNA testing.

It's possible to tell the crosses from leaflet count and shape, plus bark colouration, the smell of crushed leaves and nuts (if the hybrid tree produces nuts) etc. However it gets confusing because "back crosses" exist and I've milled a few of those too. Hybrid trees are interesting to mill but never my focus, nor the earliest orchards they got planted in. Settler-plated European walnut is my focus.

Not all white walnut is sapwood. I've seen European walnut trees 5' to 6' through that had not one lick of colour. All but one were loaded with fiddleback. They produced blanks as hard, dense and fine-pored as any coloured stuff. I find it odd that folk go silly over figured maple, but not figured walnut of the same colouration, which IMO is a superior stock wood. So I do my best to make sure such blanks wind up honey coloured. Rank, pithy, soft porous sapwood is another matter entirely.

Duane,
Perhaps a careful application of mohogany water base die over all would have covered the sap just enough..Ive had good luck with it as a first coat and rubbed out to match or just use on the sap.water base die works slow. Iplay with this stuff a lot on pieces of leftover walnut.I really like Alkanet root, but never used it on sapwood, it might be slow and take a lot of applications?? but all this can be done and what doesn/t work is easy to sand down, and can be time consuming. Id take the excess wood from your blank with it before I did anymore..I recommend a high gloss finish with dyes as wet sanding is DIFFICULT AT BEST imo. Ii hope this post helps in some way.Books can be written on the subject.

Best cure is to avoid sap wood

There is no real justification to a cheek piece or fore end tip IMO, other than decoration that has become well accepted, therefore it should not be to bulky and fit your frame and please the shooter and align the sigts for point shooting, Applies to a stock without a cheekpiece as well.. I wont go into roll overs, Weatherby's and comb height,

As for myself I lean heavy toward English/African style with or without a pancake cheekpiece, and on the thin side, side panels, small schable or delicate carving ala Brno mod 21, a little Germanic not over done on a 8" fore end, a touch of Alex Hendry, lean and mean..I leave my options open to build as I please and not in the business. I like the American classic if kept thin and without bulk or excess weight..