Wood stock refinishing, Sureshot .22

roadwarrior

roadwarrior

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Hi guys, I picked up the little rimfire for 65 bucks. It was in good condition, but in need of a good cleaning. So when I got home, I took it apart and went to town. In order to get to all the little nooks and crannies, I used the pressurized "Blast & clean" from Hoppes. When I was done, I put everything back together and wiped down the barrel and stock with a slightly oiled cloth. Fast forward a few days, I pull the little guy from the safe to show it to a friend and the stock is all messed up. Residual solvant made it's way all over the stock and lifted the original finish. It left white streaks were it driped down.

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I thought this was the perfect occasion to try something new. I would refinish the stock and shorten the LOP so that my sister and nieces would have a properly sized gun to shoot. So I went out and purchased some Circa 1850. I was amased to see how well that product worked, very little effort was needed to lift the old varnish. I used some 0000 steel wool to lightly clean the engraved or checkered areas and scraped off the rest.

I wraped the butt of the rifle in a rag before I clamped it in my vise. I used my digital caliper to mesure off 1" from the end of the butt, marked it and layed a strip of masking tape along the cut line. I used a hand saw and slowly cut, checking my line often. When I was done, I confirmed that I could not easily reuse the original plastic butt plate as it was now grossly oversized.

I remembered having an old pellet gun as a kid that only had notches cut as a butt plate, so I decided to take out my triangular file and give it a whirl! I have never done anything like this, so I'm just glad I have not broken anything... Yet!:p

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Next step is to find a good finish to apply, any suggestions?
 
Watco Danish oil, it's SUPER user friendly, fast drying, looks great and protects the wood from weather.

Its 1/3 varnish but will only have a light sheen, not a glossy finish.

Good luck!
 
I decided to go with boiled linseed oil because of price and availability. I just completed my first coat and I like what I am seeing. I'll post some pics when I'm done. Would 4 coats do the trick?
 
Four coats should be fine, but the wood will tell you. BLO is a fairly light oil so you'll have a light coloured stock in the end.

Follow the directions on the can. Should be something like:

Wet the rag, wipe it on. Repeat until the entire stock has a thin layer of oil on it.
(Lay rag, open and flat, on concrete to COMPLETELY dry)
Wait 30 mins.
Wipe off excess oil with a clean rag until the stock looks dry.
(Lay that rag, open and flat, on concrete to COMPLETELY dry)
Spot check 30 mins later - look for any extra oil seeping out. Wipe that oil off too.

Let it sit for 2 days.

Buff stock with 0000 steel wool to remove dust nibs and any wood fibres.
Clean stock

Do it again! Keep doing it until the wood seems to have absorbed all it can. When this has happened, you won't see any "dry" spots when you're at the wiping off stage.

btw, you can toss your oil rags in the garbage when they are dry and hard. Never toss or crumple up wet, oily rags unless you want to start a fire.
 
Thanks for the tips, I bought the Recochem brand and they suggested mixing it with equal parts paint thinner to aid in absorbtion, which I did.

When I striped the stock with Circa 1850, I lightly sanded it afterwards, but I was careful not to remove any caracter that the wood has accumulated with the years. After two coats, this seems to have left a darker tint to the wood with shading in some areas, the grain is also coming out nicely. It looks promising from a first timer's perspective.
 
Sounds good!

fyi, a piece of wood is like a bundle of drinking straws, open on each end and closed along the sides. So the wood fibres will soak up more oil on the ends, and not too much along the sides. As you take a piece of wood and shape it like a rifle stock, you will cut off fibres all over the place. These areas will soak up more oil and will get darker, compared to longer, flatter areas. Also, since wood is a natural product, the grain can curve in various places, especially if part of that wood was near a branch. Now you will have the end grain (open end of the 'straws'), almost anywhere. Add the fact some types of wood, esp in some areas of the tree, can have really wavy grain structures, you can have anywhere from a little end grain showing, to tons of it. This is the "blotchy" aspect people often describe with some wood. Some people want to hide it with products like sanding sealer. I embrace it. I love wood. :)

Good luck!
 
roadwarrior said:
I decided to go with boiled linseed oil because of price and availability. I just completed my first coat and I like what I am seeing. I'll post some pics when I'm done. Would 4 coats do the trick?
Click to expand...

Be careful where you throw your rags when you're done! Boiled linseed oil can spontaneously combust! A rag smothered in a pile of sawdust and shop scraps lit up overnight and burnt down a shop in Algonquin College in Ottawa a couple of decades ago. People have even come home to their trash cans on fire.


...Your UFI for the day.
 
The only thing I would have done a little differently is I'd have used a coarse metal file to slightly arch the butt from side to side. It softens the look and makes it a little less likely to get the harder outer edge digging in when pulling the stock back into the shoulder. It's not too late if you want to try it. Draw a pencil line down the sides about 1/8 inch down from the edge. You only need to do this for about one inch from the top to one inch from the bottom. Draw matching lines along the butt to separate the surface into thirds. Cut away the outer portions with the coarse file using the lines as a guide. The unmarked upper and lower one inch portions can be simply blended so you don't loose the straight center line. With the flats cut then just smoothly form the three faces into a nice smooth arched profile. Then recut your friction grooves. Although for a .22 they certainly aren't really needed.

If in doubt try this on a hunk of 2x4 lumber that you hack down to resemble the stock's butt end. Practice makes perfect and it's nice to do the practicing on a hunk of firewood or trash before tackling an actual stock.

Even better would be to cut the vertical line to a slight concave vertical line and then arch side to side all along that concave vertical line. Again since you're apparently pretty new to this sort of thing try it on an old hunk of 2x4 that you cut down to an oval shape to simulate the rifle stock. It's not hard once you get the idea. And the NEW coarse metal file works great as a fine wood rasp for this sort of work.


AND WATCH THOSE RAGS! ! ! ! !

I echo Yota's caution. I had my own BLO fire a few months back. Fortunately it was outside and ended up harmless. But it could have gone bad.

Lay out the oily rags or paper towels flat somewhere that they can fully dry to hard and crusty before putting them in your trash. You do NOT want to wad them into a tight spot or bag and seal the bag.
 
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I will not go into what I think you should use for a finish because you will use what you want regardless of what advice is given. Everybody has there own ideas and there are as many recipes for gun stock finishes as there are for chocolate chip cookies.

I will suggest this if you are at all handy with a rasp and sand paper. I wood eliminate the cheesy looking pressed checkering by just rasping it out, this will take a little reshaping of the fore end and the pistol grip area, but if you take your time you can shape a grip cap area into the pistol grip area. Hate to point this out, but as evidenced in your last picture, after you shortened the stock you rounded the edges by sanding at the butt end now your butt plate is not going to sit flush, the only way to get around it is to cut off a further 1/4" then install a butt plate or pad of your thickness, and material choosing then grind it down to size while it is "ON" the stock, this will give you a perfect seamless fit. Leave out the white line spacer as they went out with bell bottom pants and long side burns. If you have never done this before, no worries take you time, it just requires care and patience, it is not rocket science.

You have 65 bucks and your time invested so be adventurous and have some fun.
 
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Mrgoat, I decided to try my hand at filing the butt plate because I did not think I could rework the plastic butt plate to fit the smaller dimension. I would not know how to even start that. I have owned my set of files for 2 years and this was the first time I actually used one of them. I intentionally sanded the edge of the butt, after I filed the notches, so that it would not snag. The whole butt plate concept was pretty much a spur of the moment thing and not really thought out. This being my first anything I refinish and being a cheap 22 intended for kids, I used the K.I.S.S. ( keep it simple stupid) approach. ;)

Jimbo14, thanks for contributing to my general knowledge, I love it! BCRider, thanks for your input I will try to practice as you have said, although I am having a bit of a hard time visualizing your suggestion.:p

I am away from home because of work and I can't wait to get back to that rifle stock!
 
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Nice job. The stock has "character" now and it isn't plastic-looking. Also, you did a proper job disposing of those oil-soaked rags properly so your house didn't burn down. That's an added bonus. :)

Have you looked at your other rifles to see what's next? ;)
 
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