Listen to your wife. The Russians may have stripped and added shellac to K98 and other foreign rifle wood stocks but to my knowledge, when the 91-91/30 stocks got to beat up, they either sold them off for surplus in the mid sixties, gave them to the Chinese and North Koreans, maybe the North Vietnamese, etc. The ones they kept for themselves, they usually just restocked them. Yes, if they needed it, they would lightly sand or strip and reapply the shellac but for the most part, the rifles they kept for themselves got A+ treatment. This is quite prevalent in the rifles that are now on the market.
The rifles we were offered back in the sixties and seventies, were mostly used and abused. Poor bores were common, as were beaten and broken stocks. In fact, the stocks on may were considered to be unsafe to fire. International firearms in Montreal, pulled the stocks off and threw them into the garbage by the hundreds. They then refinished the best of the barreled actions into some very nice sporters.
Your rifle may be beat up, it may not look like much to you now but 20 years down the road, some purist will look at it and evaluate it to about half of what you consider it to be worth, after your ministrations.
