Staining a pistol kit

[Firedanse]

Hello, I am ready to stain the wood on my kit and need some help. The wood is walnut, the stain I have Colonial Maple. I am trying, or as close as possible, to match a rifle with maple stock. Should I be the maple stain on Walnut or is there a better suggestion.
Thanks, Firedanse

 

[CrackStock]

Fire,

I am not sure of your question. Please rephrase it.

Many use no stain on walnut at all, but rather simply oil it. Test an area that will not show for the oiled look.

Do you know what was used on the other gun?

YMHS,
CrackStock

 

[Stumpkiller]

Going to be tough, any stain you add will only make the walnut darker. Maple is a very light wood to begin with, walnut dark. With a title like "Colonial Maple" I assume you have a MinWax type stain. They are designed to make pine wood look like hardwoods, or darken light woods. Do some test patches in the barrel channel or inside the lock mortise where it will not show.

If you wet the wood with water and it is already darker than the rifle, you're sunk. If it's a tad lighter, you can use "Natural" and cut in a tiny amount of the "Colonial Maple"

 

[JBark11957]

Firedanse-
Trying to match walnut to maple is tough. If the maple was stained a dark color than it is not so tough, but if it is meduium to light you have your work cut out. Some people will bleach a dark wood to get rid of the dark color, then you are starting at ta point where the walnut is light to start with. Certain acids can lighten the color of walnut too, though I can't remember the name of what I have used. Walnut will naturally lighten with exposure to sunlight, but that takes a while. Have a sunlamp?
Of course, walnut is one damn beautiful wood, why not maqke it look like walnut? For that matter, how tough would it be to substitute the walnut piece with maple. Not too expensive, that's for sure.

 

[Zonie]

firdanse: What the others said.
I would suggest that you only stain the Walnut if it has areas of light heartwood in it and then, I would only apply it to the light wood areas to make them match the rest of the wood, but that's just me.
As you may know, I would suggest you use a water base stain. Water (or alcohol) based stains can easily be thinned with water. This allows applying thinned "washes" which allows you to control the amount of darkening easily.
Apply a coat, look at it in the sunlight, if it's not dark enough, allow it to dry and apply another coat.
Keep this up until it is as dark (when wet) as you want.

Oil base stains Really darken the wood on the first coat and then don't change the color or darkness much no matter how many additional coats you apply.

The original pistols which are still around were made of Walnut more often than not, and as Curly Maple was such a popular wood on longrifles, it tells me that carrying a Curly Maple stocked Rifle and a Walnut stocked Pistol would be quite Period Correct even if it was quite a bit darker than the rifle.

Before you stain the wood (if you decide to do it at all), you must take the stock outside on a sunny day and wet it with water. Only then will you know what the finished color of the wood will be because the wet wood will be Much Darker than it is when it is dry.
When you apply the finish, be it linseed oil or whatever, it will be the same color as the wood was when it was wet.

By the way, because we haven't heard from you, I assume your project is going OK?
Thanks for asking our opinions and let us know how it is going.