Chinese Type 56 SKS stock "restore"

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Harley1953

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i have just recently got one of the Chinese SKS type 56 that are being sold by a few online vendors. It is the plain jane wood stock that I am sure came with this military surplus rifle. It has it's share of dings,etc and appears to have been finished at some point with some sort of shellac that is mostly missing. I finished taking it apart and cleaning the majority of the cosmoline out of the metal parts yesterday with mineral spirits and paint brush. I also used the same stuff to clean the inside of the stock of gunked up cosmoline..

I have viewed some of the other online forums and was wondering what my OSA family thought about restoring/cleaning the stock on this rifle. Should I just take some Murphy's wood soap and clean it and then put something like linseed oil or lemon oil on the stock?

What do you folks think?
 

Honeybee

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I usually strip or sand the old finish off then stain it and use polyurethane varnish to build up the new finish.
You can wipe on wipe-off the poly like an oil finish.
 

milsurp2.0

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Call me dumb here, but how do you go about doing that?

Leave it in your car on a hot day or make an "oven" out of a trash can and light bulb/lamp fitting so the heat from the bulb is trapped in the can with the stock. Let it heat up and the cosmo will sweat out, just wipe off, and repeat.
 

Harley1953

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Thanks guys for the replies. I think what I will do is use Milsurp's trash can oven method to sweat out what cosmoline I can and then use the lemon oil as AKguy to clean the dirt and grime out of it. At that point I might just use the linseed oil and call it good. It is after all a used military surplus rifle. It never was a "pretty rifle"..........
 

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