stain for walnut

[bowkill]

what would be the best stain for walnut. It is on a 12 gauge flintlock i am building? Not messed with walnut much seems to have some descent grain in it? Just fishing for ideas..

 

[coloradoclyde]

I'm no expert but it depends on what you want it to look like. I am fond of tung oil( no stain) but I recommend doing some test samples on some scrap wood :2

 

[Treestalker]

I use a locally available walnut stain to darken, and hand finish with boiled linseed oil. Used a piece of Ozark walnut from Big Sandy Mtn near here to build a .36 percussion that I later traded. the diluted stain evened the coloration out. Also, I tried singing the wood with a torch and using walnut Perma stain on a medieval handgonne tiller, and it had that almost black with reddish undertones that looked 500 years old! I also did this with hickory, and it looked great. Nobody could tell it was hickory. Treestalker.

 

[Zonie]

Some use a diluted walnut stain. Some use a diluted mahogany stain for a reddish color. I usually use nothing.

Walnut may look very light in color while it is being worked but those looks can be deceiving.

Once it is oiled it will turn very dark "walnut brown" and the darker and lighter grain pattern will pop out.

Because applying oil will mess up the wood if a stain is needed, my advice is don't use oil until all the sanding and staining (if any) is done.

To get a real good look at how the wood will appear after it is oiled, take it outside into the sunlight.
Then, use a wet washrag to wet the wood with water.
The water will instantly darken the wood to show off its finished oiled color.

If you like what you see, don't apply anything except the finishing oil.

If you want to change the tint or color remember, a little stain goes a long way to darken walnut.

Nothing, in my mind will screw up a beautiful piece of walnut worse than applying dark heavy stains to it. They hide the subtle changes in color the grain of the wood possesses.

 

[don hepler]

I always used a little "red" to enhance the look of walnut. Either red oak or mahogany, but maybe because I grew up in the 60's and they were used a lot on guns of that era. It seems, that guns prior to the 60's, were a darker walnut. I'm talking about modern firearms, because most of the traditional guns, that I am familiar with, where maple. I don't know if early traditional, walnut stocked rifles, were ever stained a reddish color, or not.

 

[Treestalker]

Amen to what Zonie said. IIRC, Hacker Martin mentioned old timers using a "red violin varnish' on guns, but I think he was talking about maple. What that might look like on walnut I have no idea, but I've got some cherry Minwax I might experiment with on walnut just to see how it looks. Ain't this a great hobby? Treestalker.

 

[Rifleman1776]

It seems, that guns prior to the 60's, were a darker walnut.

That might seem like a reasonable conclusion but probably not correct. All woods darken with age. Parts exposed to light darken faster and deeper. Also, woods from different regions of the country could vary in color, density, etc.
Antique furniture apprasiers identify fakes by the different shadings of light/dark in old and new woods.
Replicating old woods is a rare skill. It might be easier to fake a Rembrant painting.

 

[Billnpatti]

I'm sitting here looking at a walnut desk that I made several years ago. I didn't use any stain on it because I like the natural color of walnut. The color of the desk is a very attractive medium brown. If such a color appeals to you, then just sand and varnish your gunstock. If you want it a bit darker and want to use an authentic stain, just get some walnut husks and soak them in water for several days. Strain off the water and then gently simmer it until is has concentrated down. You will end up with an original walnut brown stain that will darken your wood but keep the natural brown tone.

 

[Patocazador]

If your walnut stock has a lot of figure in the wood, wet the stock with water and it will be similar to no stain with a finish. That will give you a good idea of what the finished product will look like.
Stain will tend to mask some of the beautiful patterns found in many pieces of wood.

 

[Col. Batguano]

Do you like the reddish color that USGI walnut guns take on after about 50 years? The official USGI finish was cold pressed raw linseed oil. That is NOT the flax seed oil that is sold in health stores. That is the hot pressed stuff, and doesn't oxidize the same as cold pressed. If you go to the CMP web site (www.odcmp.org) they have a whole tutorial on using different stains to get the reddish color, if you don't have the time to wait for the RLO to oxidize. I have a couple of Garands I finished in RLO about 5 years ago. I didn't much care for the cold look they had when they came, and bare walnut is too blue hued for my tastes. Well, 5 years later, they are about 80% of the way there as my WW II Garands, and 5 years isn't that long when you think about it.

 

[galamb]

Perhaps my tastes are a little "morbid", but I like a dark finish on all my rifles regardless of the underlying wood (cherry, walnut, maple).

Here is an example of black walnut with a mahogany stain over it. The walnut was plain.

(this is not a ML so I cropped out some of the "offending" details - but the stock wood is the same as I would use to stock a front stuffer)

 

[Billnpatti]

Yes, I agree that some stains can mask the figure in wood. If they coantain an opaque pigment, they certainly will mask the natural grain. That is why I prefer to use alcohol based stains. Leather dye makes an excellent stain that will not mask the grain. It staiins very darkly at first but you just buff it back with some 0000 steel wool to the depth of color that you like. You can also find other non-masking stains at woodworking stores such as Wood Crafters. They can also provide you with a lot of excellent information on how to get just the color that you want.

 

[BrownBear]

Gotta say, in a wide variety of firearms from moderns to muzzleloaders, the best looking walnut was lightly touched with French Red stain. It makes the figure pop like no other stain I've seen, and I like the faintly red cast to walnut. Not for everyone, but it hits my tastebuds just right.

 

[Stophel]

Nothing is the best stain for walnut.

 

[necchi]

Nothing is the best stain for walnut.

Well, bowkill seem's to think there is,,
He's asking,,?
maybe you can explain, :idunno:

 

[Stophel]

So much time, effort, money and energy have been spent over the centuries to try to make every other wood on Earth LOOK LIKE WALNUT... and yet people still insist on staining walnut. Boggles my mind.

:idunno:

Walnut looks best with NO stain. And preferably with a genuine, really boiled linseed oil finish.

:wink:

 

[necchi]

I hear ya, :wink:

 

[Zonie]

Well, there is some walnut that needs staining.

It won't be found on a good grade of walnut gunstock wood but people building with walnut they get from trees they have cut down will often find a large amount of sapwood present.

This sapwood is virtually the same as the dark heartwood as far as strength goes but it is often quite blond.

Staining it with an alcohol based stain can make it come close to matching the dark areas of the wood. It might take a few coats of stain but with alcohol based stains that's no problem.

 

[BrownBear]

This sapwood ... is often quite blond.

One of my GPR's was uniformly brown from the factory, but when I stripped it for a little reshaping the forend was bright yellow/blond. Ugliest thing you've ever seen.

Closer looks sezz Lyman incorporated the covering "stain" in their finish. I tried this stain and that dye without much luck. Then I took a page from Lyman's (Investarm's) book, and mixed some oil-based walnut stain in the oil finish applied only to that region of the stock. Just kept doing it with successive coats until there was a match, and went to clear finish over that.

Problem solved. You'd never spot the blond for looking at it.

 

[fleener]

if you want to stain it, but not too much try the watco oil stains. The cherry one will give the walnut a little bit of a red hue that was common for older guns. Watco cherry will not give you much red or much darkening. I have not tried anything darker on my walnut stocks.

Fleener