doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DIY Gunsmithing @ doublegunshop.com Stock finishing questions

I do not use paint store oils at all. I prefer to purchase edible flax seed oil as used for culinary purposes because the quality is far superior also being much lighter in colour than oils sold in paint stores. I add my own lead based dryers because I have a gallon of it also I find it performs far better than the modern dryers you purchase today.

Well after a month of "Lock Down" boredom started to set in so I decided to add some more to this thread in the way of explanation about my thinking of modern finishes for modern guns. Also I want to show that a modern finish can look as good as a hundred plus years finish. Things all went very quiet when I posted the picture of sanding sealers so I thought I should show what they are capable of. So not wanting to make things easy I decided to finish a piece of timber that has been seasoning in my workshop for a couple of years, it is in fact a part of the direction wedge removed from a large Oak that out grew its allotted space in my garden. So the piece of oak was left under a pile of leaves for a year to hopefully develop some fungus grain interest.
To start I removed the chainsaw marks with P80 paper on a disk sander and followed with P100 by hand well it was all end grain and I was after smooth not perfectly flawless.
In the first side picture the timber was given three raged on coats of "Shellac Sealer" half hour between coats then a light sanding with P150 then one raged on coat of "Linseed Oil" with driers then twelve hours later another coat of "Linseed Oil" left overnight in a warm place then given two applications of Linseed and Carnauba wax polish all completed in a day and a half.



The other side was given the same treatment as far as the P150 though using the Cellulose sealer and wax polish. Now this has the same quality surface finish as the Shellac sealer but the Cellulose Sealer imparts no colour to the wood. This is not altogether a bad thing especially if you want to give the wood a colour of your own choice and of course, this finish will not change it. Using the Cellulose sealer from start to finish was half an hour.
One thing I have found that I am incapable of photographing surface sheen on wood though it is there and all the grain is filled to perfectly smooth.



This is all just another way of looking at finishing wood.

Thanks for the follow up Oak test piece damascus, it looks like an interesting finishing challenge. I'd suspect pictures may not tell the whole story, but I think I can appreciate how the oil finish picks up contrast in the grain. Aside from grain filling, I'd think that test piece benefits from sealing in that I suspect detail might be lost from uneven penetration if an oil alone was used. Only guessing, thanks again.

damascus, part of the reason for the silence may be due to many of us never having heard of sanding sealers.

But if you can fill oak pores that easily with it, walnut should be little problem.

I do see that it is carried by at least a few supply houses (Lee Valley being the first one that I found).

thanks.

Brent
PS. Finding a decent Spar varnish even with polyurethane, is about impossible, locally. the stuff I bought last week is atrocious.

Do not use sanding sealers with stearic acid in it with any polyurethane finish.
Finish will come off in sheets. Had this discussion with Sherwin-Williams several years ago.
They did make it right, paid for stripping and new finish material.
Chuck

Stearic Acid is found in in Vegetable oils and in checking Linseed oil does have between 4 & 5% though much lower than in Animal Fats. Polyurethane is the kiss of death to coin a phrase for gun stocks because it dries so hard and brittle that it will not allow the natural seasonal movement of wood without cracking also not allowing the passage of water vapour in or more importantly out, in fact the wood is held in an impervious box. Though I do not have any idea of the formulation of sanding sealers though I have been using them for some twenty five years now with no problems covering them, though I will not use any finish containing Polyurethane for Wood.