Used regular stripper, cleaned it up with very fine steel wool and mineral spirits. Set out in the sun for several hours to dry and bleed cosmo
out of the wood. I applied red chestnut stain twice, just can't get it as dark and red as I want. Gee, it's not real pretty wood is it?
I will be applying several coats of tru oil. Depending on how this one turns out I may not do my other one.
Originally Posted By Fra_Tra:
Used regular stripper, cleaned it up with very fine steel wool and mineral spirits. Set out in the sun for several hours to dry and bleed cosmo
out of the wood. I applied red chestnut stain twice, just can't get it as dark and red as I want. Gee, it's not real pretty wood is it?
I will be applying several coats of tru oil. Depending on how this one turns out I may not do my other one.
And that is why I choose to leave my milsurps as is other than a cleaning with Howards Feed n Wax or something similar. Once you strip off the old finish you can never go back. They look fine with the patina that comes with age. In the past I stripped and refinished a few old rifles and was never pleased with the way they turned out. They just didn't look right.
eta; I did have one refinish job come out nice. A RC K98 that I washed the stock with alcohol to remove the Russian varnish and then applied BLO. That one did turn out very nice.
Originally Posted By jrinfoley:
Originally Posted By Fra_Tra:
Used regular stripper, cleaned it up with very fine steel wool and mineral spirits. Set out in the sun for several hours to dry and bleed cosmo
out of the wood. I applied red chestnut stain twice, just can't get it as dark and red as I want. Gee, it's not real pretty wood is it?
I will be applying several coats of tru oil. Depending on how this one turns out I may not do my other one.
And that is why I choose to leave my milsurps as is other than a cleaning with Howards Feed n Wax or something similar. Once you strip off the old finish you can never go back. They look fine with the patina that comes with age. In the past I stripped and refinished a few old rifles and was never pleased with the way they turned out. They just didn't look right.
eta; I did have one refinish job come out nice. A RC K98 that I washed the stock with alcohol to remove the Russian varnish and then applied BLO. That one did turn out very nice.
It depends on what you do. With American Mulsurps its actually a good idea to clean the stocks, leave em black and dirty and all they do is slowly rot. You can clean them without losing the red patina by just washing them with BLO and white paper towels. The black goes away but the feel and patina stay. Basically you are "changing the oil"
To the op, the only way to get your stock right is to do it the way they did at the factory, in your case the proper stain followed by a coat of Shalac. Russian arms have never really had pretty wood for the most part.
