After you have the wood clean, all dents where the wood fibers are not cut can usually be raised by steaming the area thoroughly although it may take a number of applications. You'll be surprised at just how much oil, cosmo and dirt a wood stock can hold and how deep it can penetrate. Let it sit and dry until you think all the old oil and cosmo is gone. Clean the stock with mineral spirits, very mild detergents and clean rags. Time and patience are your friends in this project. from sending the frost up the walls after this particular exercise however!! Forget the oven cleaner if the stock is of any value. They do not divulge what tactics they employ in order to keep the Mrs. A number of folks claim putting the stock in the dish washer is very good also. The best thing is heat such as the garbage bag method or the heat lamp method. I would not use anything with harsh chemicals in it to clean any stock of any value as it attacks and damages the wood fibers. (NOTE: "Boiled" linseed oil is linseed oil with dryers added so it will dry, it isn't actually boiled). This seems to work better and faster then boiled linseed oil. You can do an excellent finish by buying tung oil wood finish and using it. Repeat as needed.įor a finish, WWII M1 rifle wood was treated by dipping in hot Tung oil or boiled linseed oil. Put the wood in a plastic bag with whiting or litter covering it, and bake in the over at about 150 degrees NO MORE, for 30 minutes or so. Since Fall is coming, you can do a good job in the oven. The key is using something like whiting or litter to actually absorb the grease before it can soak back in. Put in the sun and the heat will cause the oils to boil to the surface where the litter will absorb it. You can buy whiting (Calcium carbonate) from Brownell's and some drug stores.Īnother option is to put the wood in a black plastic bag and cover it with kitty litter. Quickly seal it in a black SOLVENT PROOF plastic bag and put it on a drive way or roof top in the summer sun.Īfter a few hours, open the bag, give it a few minutes for the solvent to evaporate then brush off the dirty whiting, which will have turned all shades of orange and brown from the absorbed grease and oil. Today, mix the whiting with lacquer thinner and coat the stock inside and out, especially on the end grain like the end of the butt. This is the method the old stock makers and furniture makers used to degrease wood. This would return a black stock to it's natural color in 2 to 3 treatments. The oils and grease would boil to the surface where the whiting would absorb it and prevent it from just instantly soaking back in. The old way was to buy "whiting" which is a fine white flour-like powder, mix it with Trichloroethane to a pancake batter consistency, then coat the wood with it, inside and out. Since Trichloroethane is now banned, we've had to find other methods of getting grease and oil out of wood. Just had to ask here, so what do you guys think? Once clean enough, I was either going to use diluted BLO for penetration followed by straight BLO handrubbed and dryed over a period of weeks until desired results are achieved. I had read numerous accounts of people using acetone and 0000 steel wool. My concerns are over-use of the degreaser, or too much water, soaking. It has a nice tiger stripe graion to it but its hard to differentiate between what might be grain and residual oil still in the wood. So, what i did was start off with a degreaser from lowes, and sprayed it heavily and watched brown gunk slough off, and then rinsed with hot hot water, i scrubbed it with a nylon brush but theres still dark spots on it. My goal is for an as issued look, I dont want it to look brand new, i have no desire to put sandpaper to it. Some say linseed oil is the way to go while others swear by tung oil. One guy swears by oven cleaner for initial degreasing, others say its to be avoided at all costs. Anyway, after reading tons of info, I cant seem to find two sources that agree on a procedure/what to use. I started with an M14 stock because if I mess it up, they are easy to find and pretty cheap to replace. So I wanted to spruce up a few of my milsurp stocks.
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