Need some solid advice

[alrany187]

I was cleaning my muzzleloader after some heavy use and accidentally some of the water came out the touch hole and on the wrist and side of the stock. This removed some of the stain and finish from the stock. When I hit it with some pledge, the color seems to come back, so I'm not sure how much of the finish is gone.

I would really like to avoid refinishing the entire gun if possible. Do you have any thoughts that would help guide me?

 

[Zonie]

To me, it is strange that cleaning water would remove the finish and stain unless the stock is finished only with Linseed oil.

If Linseed oil is the only finish on the gun you can fix it by applying more "Boiled Linseed Oil" and letting it dry (which takes a long time).

If you really want to have a finish that won't be bothered by soapy water you can buy some Birchwood Casey "Tru-Oil" and add a coat or two of it on your stock.

This is a linseed oil with driers added so that it not only dries rapidly (2-8 hours) but it is impermeable to soapy water.

This product, if applied in a thick coat will end up being very glossy. If that is not what you want on your gun you can either "kill" the gloss by rubbing it with tooth paste or better yet, by applying it in very thin coats.

To do this, moisten a small clean rags corner with the Tru-Oil and start rubbing it into the stock.
Work on a small area at a time and rub it until it seems to have hardened, then move on to the next small area and repeat.
Doing this does take a lot of work and a lot of time but when its finished you will have a "hand rubbed finish" that is not glossy and looks great and, it is totally waterproof.

 

[Vaino]

It's probably BLO and the water disolved it and the stain became dull or if the stain was water based, some might have been diluted.. Applying Pledge just made it shiny again. Hardware store BLO is lousy stuff and takes a month of Sundays to dry, if ever. Finished my first LR w/ BLO and during deer hunting sat in the rain and the stock became a big, gooey mess...had to wipe it w/ my hanky until all of it was gone. The stock was very dull but luckily the stain was alcohol based. A lot of excellent finishes on the market and they're all better than hardware store BLO. Rub the stock w/ a water saturated white rag and if the "stuff" is on the rag, it's either BLO or some water soluble finish. Good luck...Fred

 

[rafterob]

I did the same thing soon after taking my Son's rifle out for the first time.Since I had built and finished the rifle, I had stain on hand still. Cleaned the offended area with alcohol to remove the BLO. Feather sanded the streaked area. Restained and then reapplied BLO and then Gave it a good coating of Paste wax. That will keep it from happening again. It blended in real well and you can't even tell where its at. If you do not have the original stain for your rifle the fix may be different. Now the next thing you will do is knock the rifle over in your driveway while you are getting ready to clean it and pepper the length of the stock with pebble dimples.I know how to fix that now too :redface:

 

[Stophel]

aniline dyes and "flooding and soaking".... :shake:

 

[alrany187]

Thank you gentlemen for your worthwhile advice. It seems the situation wasn't as desperate as originally thought. I washed it with water and nothing improved, I used Pledge and it responded briefly, then I used some Old English for dark woods and it came back nicely. Thanks to all again.

 

[Birddog6]

You have postponed the conflict, but not stopped the war. It will happen again, as if water cut the finish before, it will cut it again. The only way to really stop it is to use a finish that is waterproof, such as Permalyn or Tru-oil. How glossy or how dull you want it is easily obtained with either finish.

Keith Lisle

 

[MSW]

At the 'tail end' i realise, but i agree with Birddog6 - you would do well to get some true- oil.

just a thought...

 

[matt denison]

...or some real wax. Pledge does not contain any wax like in the old days. Reading the label it will tell you "contains no wax so no waxy build up". Well, a waxy build up is sorta what is desired. I use Johnsons Past Wax and have used shoe polish and Turtle Wax in the past with good results too. I'd like to try Sex Wax just because I like the name but surfboard wax isn't available here in the mountains. :rotf:

 

[wayne1967]

I used thin layers of Permalyn on my last two builds. My next I am going to try the BLO oil finish that TOTW sells. Are Permalyn and BLO compatible if you wanted to do a top coat of a half and half mix?

 

[alrany187]

At the 'tail end' i realise, but i agree with Birddog6 - you would do well to get some true- oil.

just a thought...

I thank everyone for their input. I have some Permlyn Sealer, will that do just as good?

 

[Bill Hall]

One time I used boiled linseed oil on a gunstock and it came out beautiful. It was compltetly dry by the time I took it out for it's first deer hunt. We had a freak snowstorm one morning during the hunt, in October, and the trees were covered in a heavy, wet snow. As I was walking through the trees, big gobs of snow would fall down and plop all over me and the rifle. I stopped once and wiped the water off the gun and noticed that the patterns of the water seemed to be under the finish and into the aqua fortis. I thought, "ok, this will dry in a day or two and disappear". Nope, it was permanent, I had to scrape off all the finish and re-apply the aqua fortis and then re-finish with some other gunstock oil finish. I don't remember what I used, but it is permanent and won't let moisture pass through to the wood. I just don't have much faith in linseed oil anymore. Bill.

 

[bioprof]

I could be wrong, but I believe that Permalyn is a modern polyurethane varnish. I believe that I heard one person on this board had problems applying it over an oil finish. During the winter, the top coat cracked. Polyurethane finishes form a hard coat and it makes sense to me that you wouldn't want to put it over the top of a softer finish. Then again, I could be all wet.

 

[bioprof]

I've heard that some have had good luck mixing Spar varnish with BLO.

 

[Vaino]

My "standard finish" is 2 soak in/wipe off coats of LMF sealer w/ a complete dry between coats. The soak in is approx 15-20 mins and during this time more sealer is applied to the absorbed areas but don't let it set up. When the 2nd coat of LMF sealer is dry, a hard rub w/ 0000 stl woolis used to remove any surface LMF. This is followed by 3 very thin coats of Wahkon Bay Trucoat which is finger rubbed into the stock and is completely dry between coats. The resultant finish is as waterproof as any finish and has a very low sheen which eliminates the need for rubbing back w/ stl wool or pumice.....Fred

 

[Dave K]

Just my personal observation. There is NO WAY that BLO was originally used as a finish on the old guns. I have owned way to many that have had a hard type of finish like a varnish. BLO, is labor intensive and never permanent. I use Tru-Oil now and so far I am extremely happy with it. I will never use BLO again and I have actually stripped it off all of the guns I used it on and replaced it with Tru-Oil.

 

[rich pierce]

+1. The boiled linseed oil craze started in the post-war era. Post WWII, that is. Gun writers like Jack O'Conner extolled the virtues of the hand-rubbed finish on custom sporters. Somebody reverse translated this to figure that's what they must have done in colonial times, as if they could not get varnish ingredients. But nobody could afford to spend 2 weeks finishing a rifle back then.

 

[MSW]

if i remember correctly (i can hear laughter in the background, but it does happen on rare occasion), Alexander alludes to BLO in his book The Gunsmith of Grenville County, where he described a tragic death of a colonial gunsmith's child who drank shellack.

gruesome, but it would seem to indicate that shellack and not BLO was the most probable finish of choice.

just a free opinion; no doubt worth the price.