stock cleaning

[ski76]

I am about ready to stain my Lancaster stock and was wondering what to use to get smudges and candle sut off the stock. Also, is bleaching required on a curly maple stock ?

 

[bob1961]

light sanding with fine paper then stain away....what light smudges are left should blend in with the curl :v .............bob

 

[paulvallandigham]

YOu can give the stock a good wash with soap and water to get off most of it. That will raise the nap of the wood, which you can then take down with very fine sand paper. The sand paper will remove the fuzz, and also any remaining pencil marks, etc.

I also wash my hands to remove any grease from them before handling the stock during the sanding. No point in putting more oils back on the stock after you took the time to get the others off!

After you stain the stock to the color you want, you may want to bone the wood down, using either a piece of bone, or antler, a hardwood dowel, or even the shank of a long screw driver. Boning smoothes the wood, and gives it a hard surface. It takes stock finishes well. Boning also brings out little stress lines in the wood that otherwise take years to show up under the finish.

 

[Birddog6]

And unless you are extremely careful, you will bone all kinds of dents, creases & marks on the stock, so GO EASY & experiment before rubbing the H out of it.
When I burnish a stock I have about 6 dif. shaped antler pieces I have rounded for dif contours as you can sure make a mess out of a stock if a square edge hits a rounded area !! :redface:
And if you burnish one, do it all, as it is usually very obvious where you stopped.

 

[DrTimboone]

Another alternative is to scrape the stock with a steel scraper and after staining burnish it with a crumpled paper bag. :thumbsup: I prefer the boning, especialy in tight spots, but the paper bag works well too. Less chance of dinging it up too :v