doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Refinishing Beech

Good point there Keith. About the best I've seen on "Beach" is a shapely lass in a bikini.

You do know that beech and birch are different trees entirely? On top if that he is working with a European variety of beech. Use the barrel canal. It�s the same wood. Completely hidden and already on hand. About as simple as it gets.

Stain it with Minwax English Chestnut. It looks more like traditional walnut color than either of Minwax's walnut stains. If that does not look as good as you would like, come back over it with Timberluxe stain AFTER the Minwax has thoroughly dried for a few days. The quality of your sanding job will determine how it turns out.
JR

The best stain I've come across for Arctic Beech Was some I'd made up from Nitric Acid and clean steel wool dissolved in it. Was left over from another project on ancient muzzleloaders and had sat for awhile. The wood was cleaned and the stain applied, scrubbed to get the green oxidation off, and, if I remember, it got the True Oil treatment. Appeared as top quality Walnut!!

Yes KY Jon, most of us know the difference between beech and birch. Well, all except for BrentD, who can't even spell beech... and Clapper Zapper, who advised the OP to do a stain test on an entirely different wood species, and then to attempt some eclectic mix of materials and methods to achieve what I'd expect to be a garish result that might satisfy someone looking for a camo finish.

This is the internet, and we must always be careful to sort the wheat from the chaff.

I think you guys would find dying of beech maple and birch with multi step finishing regimens pretty common in furniture and cabinet making.

Making a straight grained dense hardwood look like something else is a great learning endeavor. You�ll see why using an alcohol or water based dye becomes so important to the finished result.

No reason to dismiss out of hand what artisans have been doing for centuries.

Arctic,
Aqua Fortis.....quite nice on any sugar wood. I just did a Southern Indiana .36 cal long rifle using it. Easy to use and pops the grain.

I have been using garnet schelac to get the right color and then add a coat of true oil to protect the shelac. vary the coats of garnet
bill

I managed to get the poly off with 2 stripping sessions with citristrip. I can now see that the previous refinisher had a blotchy result from whatever dye he used. Tomorrow I shall try some of the suggestions to see if we can't blend it into a balanced color. Thanks all...

You may wish to put dye in the finish to even out the tone.