Oiling milsurp stocks?

Hawkshadow said:
Thanks for the reply! I've never actually had a stock not "soak up" the light coat that's on it.
Never really considered "weather proofing" my milsurp rifles, more just applying something to keep them from drying over time. I'll have to read further into the mentioned oil options.
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As a long time wood working hobbyist I was just trying to help you out to better work with the finish.

The thing with a curable oil is that the finish is never "finished". The old adage about an oil finish was "one coat a day for a week. One coat a week for a month. One coat a month for a year. One coat a year for the rest of its life." This applies to the old style boiled linseed in its day. It still applies to the raw linseed oil used on military stocks as well as raw tung oil if that is used instead. These oils tend to cure and harden thanks to oxidizing and UV light exposure. But those same things tend to break down the hardened oil over time and that's why they need to be re-applied now and then.

In your case due to the non drying oil you've used at some point you'll want to wash the wood down with a fairly generous bath of mineral spirits to aid in drawing the Hoppes gun oil out of the wood. After you can't smell much of the mineral spirit smell then it's time to put on the first coating of a proper wood finish oil. And given that there'll still be some of the old oil deep down I'd start at the "once a month for a year" point. Apply the oil to the wood, let soak in for about 10 minutes then buff it off well with a few paper towels.

If your wood is a bit scaley and scratchy looking and feeling using a pad of medium steel wool will aid in lightly smoothing the surface grain without removing any or very little actual wood. It won't actually change the patina of the color any unless there's some layered up dirty oil mixed with old skin oils which it may clean away a little more if any is left following the mineral spirits washing.

Following wiping away the excess oil with paper towels a fairly coarse material rag applied with lots of speed and fairly high pressure will friction warm the wood and aid the oil in penetrating more deeply as well as giving a good head start to the polymerizing/curing/drying process.

Hope that helps out.
 
Standard issued Enfield rifles were finished in raw linseed oil and NOT boiled linseed oil. Below on the left a South African marked center bedded target rifle finished in BLO, on the right a standard issue Enfield finished in raw linseed oil.

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After Dunkirk evacuation it was decided that the Enfield rifle were not to be completely torn down for their yearly inspections and they would be repaired and torn down as necessary. The rifle were painted below the wood line as corrosion protection and "RAW" linseed oil was issued to the troops to oil the stock on a monthly basis.

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I used: circa 1870's oil varnish. Rub on like oil, let dry, buff. As weather preservative I use minwax paste wax. Leaves a nice satin sheen and durable water repellent surface. On my Polish M44
The polish M44's were finished with oil and are a light golden blond with little to no shine. The oilvarnish was used sparingly and didn't darken the wood substantially. Just closed up the pores to allow finger prints to be wiped off.
 
Linseed oil, boiled or raw are traditional and work well, if applied properly.

Another good coating that is easily applied is Ballistol. Makes a great preservative, swells out the grain to original dimensions as it soaks in an you can add Linseed oil to it afterwards if you want a sort of burnished finish.

Ballistol was developed before WWI by the UK, as a multi purpose coating. It was and still is a great lube/preservative/waterproofer for wood/leather/metal.

It is used in many applications on an industrial scale under many different brand names.

There is a sewing machine company in Montreal that will sell it by the bottle or case. It is one of the main lubricants/cleaners used on industrial sewing machines.

Google Ballistol in Canada. You will likely find a couple of outlets. One thing you will notice, pricing changes dramatically, depending on the outlet.

I bought a case about 10 years ago. I took half of it, six containers, to a gun show and sold them for enough to pay for all of the costs for the whole case delivered to my place.

The cans didn't make it through the first hour of the show. The fellows that bought it were thrilled that it was so cheap.

I should use my big head and order a couple of cases every year. The thing is, the stuff lasts forever and it would be easy to saturate the market.
 
Over a few weeks and exposure to air, sunlight and warmth even raw linseed oil will polymerize to a hard non sticky finish. Oils such as Ballistol won't. So once again while it won't HURT the wood it won't ever dry. So the wood will continue to feel a bit "greasy" all the time. It's better than nothing of course but it's not the right stuff to use. And with raw linseed or raw tung oil so easily available why not use the right stuff for the sake of authenticity?
 
Petroleum bases oils should not be used on wooden stocks as the oil will cause the wood to perish and go punky over time. Ever see an old Winchester lever gun or a bolt action that had been stored vertically over the years so that excess oil could drain down from the barrel and action and booger the inletting in the stock?

Again, the military stipulated the use of raw linseed oil to condition/maintain wooden stocks in service. This was quite common in many armies because flax was widely grown and linseed oil is derived from flax. If you ever walk through a field of dead ripe flax you will find your pants oil stained from the knee down because of the heavy concentration of oil in the flax bolls. This is also the reason why a flax straw fire burns so quickly and at a high temp.

Cdn/Brit/ US military stocks were treated by immersion in raw linseed oil at time of manufacture. The US military began using tung oil in Garand production in early 1941 because it was found to smoke less than linseed when the stock got hot from extended firing. One of the reasons why a lot of old military stocks take on a reddish hue is because of the presence of petroleum based oils/lubricants which oxidize in the wood.
 
oiling mil surplus with linseed oil, to funny.

every friday afternoon in btl sch (1980's), we had to oil the stock and forstock of are fn's, befor locking them up in the qm stores for the week end. come monday morning on inspection. the m/cpl would give you sh*t for not having polished stocks. you then had to start spit shinnig the so mentioned with nutral polish. as the friday came around you would just be getting a nice polished look. of course to repeat the above. imagine doing this and other db (detention block/military prison) type exercises for 16 weeks. lol

should add though, in regt we used it every so often. except when the annual brigade generals inspection was coming. then it seemed we did it every day. lol

when i do have a wood stock firearm i use it and will continue using it. old habits don't die, right or wrong if it aint broke don't fix it. now i may be wrong, correct me if i am, but if i am i'll eat a bug.
 
king66 said:
oiling mil surplus with linseed oil, to funny.

every friday afternoon in btl sch (1980's), we had to oil the stock and forstock of are fn's, befor locking them up in the qm stores for the week end. come monday morning on inspection. the m/cpl would give you sh*t for not having polished stocks. you then had to start spit shinnig the so mentioned with nutral polish. as the friday came around you would just be getting a nice polished look. of course to repeat the above. imagine doing this and other db (detention block/military prison) type exercises for 16 weeks. lol

should add though, in regt we used it every so often. except when the annual brigade generals inspection was coming. then it seemed we did it every day. lol

when i do have a wood stock firearm i use it and will continue using it. old habits don't die, right or wrong if it aint broke don't fix it. now i may be wrong, correct me if i am, but if i am i'll eat a bug.
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The annual Maintenance Technical Inspection should have raised sh*t with the unit for this. To take it a bit further, at one point in history the Cdn Guards of Picton, Petawawa and Parliament Hill were were actually spitshining FN mags and bayo scabbards with black Kiwi:eek:. Some of the "solutions" people used were just plain stupid. I can still remember our huge troop sgt (always wondered if he had to grease himself up to get thru the crew comd's hatch on a Centurion) on the ranges when I did basic at the Armoured Corps School in Borden. The silly bugger had a coke bottle full of engine oil which he was offering to pour into the breech of your rifle "to make it work better":confused:. I declined because I didn't want a face full of hot oil. I also remember buying my own bottle of Hoppes No 9 to clean my rifle and SMG properly.

Like I mentioned earlier, we would procure gallon cans of raw linseed oil and issue them after a long exercise so that the troops could recondition their FN stocks that had become dried out in the field. I even liberated a can or 2 of it to treat the "temporary" cedar fence/corral that I had built in the Lincoln Park PMQ patch to keep my 2 toddlers off the street;).

No harm using wax or Kiwi neutral on a stock as it stays on the surface, adds waterproofing, and looks good. Get it inspection shiney and the geese or deer will spook though:p.
 
last part of my post didn't read right. after battle school i never had to polish my rifle. to busy polishing every thing else lol. but seriously, in regt i was saying or meant, we wiped down our rifles with linseed.
 
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