My Buttstock Quandry

I have a Savage 4/1* that I am restoring to original condition. I have all the original Savage parts and I am cleaning up the wood. My question is about the buttstock. I finally found a Savage Butt. It has not been sanded, but all the finish is off of it and it's "in the white" so to speak. I mean it's totally without any finish. I know linseed oil is the coating used on the wood, but I coated it, and guess what, it's still white. The rest of the wood is dark. I am freshening it up too, but the white stock looks odd with the rest of the wood.

My question is, what is the proper thing to do to help the butt match up to the rest of the wood.

More BLO and time

Leave it on a windowsill. Turn over occasionally. Light acts on the lignin (??) in wood to darken it. It takes months rather than weeks.

:wave:
Patrick

Stain it.

I'd do what an Armourer would do.......... Stain it. But stain doesn't like linseed oil so I'd try to get rid of some of the oil first

Any particularly common stain color/brand that is used for this purpose?

A lot of military stocks retain residual oils which makes either a water or oil based stain a poor choice. Leather stains are alcohol based and will penetrate better. Fiebings is a good brand. They make a light, medium and dark brown color. All of these tend to produce a degree of reddish/russet leather color. A lot of the Savage wood had a reddish hue to it, so this may work well.

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Originally Posted by Morning Wood

Any particularly common stain color/brand that is used for this purpose?

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Whatever stain you may end up useing make sure you "test" it for colour first. Wood takes stain in different ways, the fact that you have already oiled it could affect the finish especially as the oil may have sunk further into the grain in some parts more than others. Stain is not like paint as it will not necessarily give you a uniform depth of colour, if you are not carefull you could end up with blotchy mess instead of a nice uniform finish. I suggest that you try the stain on a clean piece of similar timber and also on a piece that has been oiled to try and give you some idea of the finish. Good luck:thup:

IN our big workshops we had a big vat of dark stain and if the woodwork wasn't as reasonable match when it came into the workshop, it was when it left the staining tank. But the above forumers are right in that even then, after an overnight dunking, some wood remained patchy but we still used it. I seem to remember that at Ngaruawahia Base Workshop in New Zealand the stain was based on........... Oh, forget the name now, but it makes water go purple but very effective on wood

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Originally Posted by Peter Laidler

IN our big workshops we had a big vat of dark stain and if the woodwork wasn't as reasonable match when it came into the workshop, it was when it left the staining tank. But the above forumers are right in that even then, after an overnight dunking, some wood remained patchy but we still used it. I seem to remember that at Ngaruawahia Base Workshop in New Zealand the stain was based on........... Oh, forget the name now, but it makes water go purple but very effective on wood

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Potassium permanganate solution gives that dusky brown colour to beech.

Here is a whole page of DIY stainers:

Wood Finishing Enterprises - Chemicals, Dyes & Mordants

That's the stuff............... When I was at my boarding school I put a handfull of the stuff in the main block header tank and for the next hour, the hot water taps spewed out purple water. The sinks looked like the aftermath from a pontifical high mass! Of course, my hands had a slight purple tinge to them which I thought had doomed me to a slippering from the House Master or Chemistry teacher. However, fate looked kindly on me because everyone at the school who had used the hot water, including the staff also had a purple tinge too......... and not only on their hands from what I later learned

Chestnut Ridge military stock stain will give you an original Savage stain look. It has a reddish tint to it. It's alcohol base and works well on old oiled military woodwork. Just clean the woodwork with ammonia, rinse with water, dry and paint it on to taste. Then treat the wood with RLO as normal. Google them and order it direct. They're located in PA I think.

Thank you gentlemen, Today's project was staining the wood. I'm pretty happy with the final result. I found that Cabot Cherry produced a an effect similar to the Savage hue. I wish the forestock had gone a little darker, and the top front HG is brand new and was dyed with that dark stuff Peter mentioned. It was deep and I couldn't get it all out, but I'm happy with the outcome. A coat of BLO is all that I need to be finished.

https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...venfwood-1.jpg

Morning Wood, was your Savage aquired in bubba'd/sporter form?

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Originally Posted by me2

Morning Wood, was your Savage aquired in bubba'd/sporter form?

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Yep. Typical bubba hack job. These forearms are getting hard to find too.