Walnut Stock Refinishing

[Vaino]

The TC Hawken shown below is walnut and seeing it's straight grained w/o any highlights, stained it dark. In daylight, it's a dark chocolate brown.

The first application is 2 coats of wipe on/wipe off LMF sealer w/ a 10 min soak for each coat and then when dry, a good scrubbing w/ 0000 steel wool to remove any surface finish and then 2 thin coats of Wahkon Bay Trucoat applied w/ the fingers.

This yields a very dull finish which I like for hunting.......Fred

 

[Onojutta]

Years ago I refinished a Lyman Trade Rifle after the factory gloss finish cracked from the wood swelling when hunting in the rain. I simply sanded it down to bare wood, and finished with several coats of hand rubbed tung oil, with no stain. I thought the walnut was dark enough and didn't need any stain. The tung oil has held up for years with hardly any maintenance. I now use a finish method similar to what flehto described, which probably would have worked out just as well.

I also stripped the bluing off the barrel and left it in the white, so the whole rifle was lightened from its factory appearance.

My general rule with any hardwood is the less stain, the better. Unless the goal is to make it look aged, darkening wood just takes away from its natural beauty. Of course that's just my opinion.

Not the best picture, but here's how it ended up.

 

[MSW]

Generally I use mineral spirits.

Gus

thanks!

 

[NEW222]

Nice. Thank you again all for the tips on the stock work.