Garand Refinish. Help me decide...

[Shadowrider]

So it has begun. I scored a nice Garand out of the CMP a while back and it came with one of their brand new birch stocks. I utterly hate the orange stain they use on them so it's going to go bye bye.

I got a piece of new birch plywood and have been messing around with oil finishes. I was wanting to make it look like a walnut at least in color, but in the process I put some pure 100% tung oil on a spot. Now I'm not sure. It is coming out a really nice brown and just looks really classy and I'm thinking this just might be the route to go. One thing is sure, it will be an old school oil finish, I've already got my own concoction of boiled linseed oil, stain, pure tung and some other goodies in it figured out and have the dark brown color pretty much nailed down. But the pure tung is looking really really good, it's actually a bit darker than in the pic. This pic only has two coats on it, I'm going to keep going until it quits taking in the oil. It got a bit darker on the 2nd coat and I'm gonna just see where it goes. I've seen some pic on other forums of guys that did theirs in "blonde" and they are growing on me. This piece of plywood is a bit darker than those and I'm thinking it's gonna be perfect if the actual stock will come out the same way. What say you?

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[Sanjuro82]

I've done my fair share of staining and hand rubbed finishes. If the wood is in good shape and has an interesting grain patern then leaving the wood in the blonde is quite nice. You also do a thinned stain using a light color, something like "golden oak", and then follow with the oil finsih of your choice. I prefer tung oil most of the time, but on a Garand I probably go with the BLO.

 

[coolhandluke]

The dark brown stain on the right side of the plywood is a very close match to the finish that comes on the new CMP walnut stocks sets.

As I'm sure you've already found out, birch is not the easiest wood to refinish as it does not take on oil or oil based dyes evenly and leaves a blotchy appearance. For the best looking finish you'll probably need to look at using a water based dye prior to applying the oil or use an alcohol based dye before or during the oil application process. I have seen a few people have good success getting the medium brown walnut look on birch by using RIT cocoa colored water based dye. If you are looking for the medium or dark brown look with red undertones, Fiebing's alcohol based dyes work great. I prefer to use the aged oil finish method with Feibing's dyes and BLO when refinishing service rifle stocks. It works great for getting that aged reddish oxidized oil look.

Below are a couple stocks that I have refinished using this method. The first is a birch Garand stock (post war replacement) and the second is a walnut 1903 C stock (WWII era Keystone). Both stocks were refinished with BLO and Fiebings medium brown dye. The only difference in the process was that the 1903 stock was waxed with Tom's 1/3 mix which leaves a matte sheen and the Garand stock was waxed with Johnson's paste wax which leaves a more glossy sheen.

 

[Shadowrider]

Those both look very nice. Why is the birch so red? That come from the wood? That red would be good by me, but what I got was ORANGE. Yuck...

Yes this stock has some blotchyness going on with the original stain that was applied which is another reason I'm leaning on just oil. I think I'm going to have to bleach it to get rid of it all.

If you look at the plywood in the 2nd pic, the far left strip is actually Formby's Traditional Tung Oil Finish in the low gloss version. I'm seriously wondering if has ANY tung oil in it. It's mostly just a varnish, it builds up a film and it's entirely too shiny. Not "tung oil like" at all. The pic that I labeled is real tung oil. Got it from Real Milk Paint Company. I looked all over the city and all I could find were the various ones like Minwax, Formby's etc. True tung oil doesn't have much shine at all and you have to really leave a heavy coat and lots of them to get any build up. It works very much like BLO and protects from moisture a good bit better. That's the main reason I want to go with it. I probably will finish it with the Tom's mix, that's good stuff.

The brown you mention is actually Watco Danish Oil for the most part. It's made from BLO, stain and a bunch of mineral spirits to get it to penetrate. I added a tung oil based stain and cut it with mineral spirits to tint it a bit off of brown. A touch of red makes a richer more authentic looking color. It didn't really come out in the pic. If I stain that's what it will be followed with tung. Some stained birch stocks that I've seen are actually pretty cool looking. The blotches give a tiger stripe look sometimes. But I'd never get that lucky....

Edit: On second thought I might just go look for some Fiebing's to play with. Does Hobby Lobby have it or do I have to find a leather shop?

 

[tsmithwick]

If you have the tools or time you could find or make your own stock for it of buy one from someone who would be able to and then just stain it easier and control the color better. But that’s just a more personal approach than some like to do.

 

[coolhandluke]

Those both look very nice. Why is the birch so red? That come from the wood? That red would be good by me, but what I got was ORANGE. Yuck...

Yes this stock has some blotchyness going on with the original stain that was applied which is another reason I'm leaning on just oil. I think I'm going to have to bleach it to get rid of it all.

If you look at the plywood in the 2nd pic, the far left strip is actually Formby's Traditional Tung Oil Finish in the low gloss version. I'm seriously wondering if has ANY tung oil in it. It's mostly just a varnish, it builds up a film and it's entirely too shiny. Not "tung oil like" at all. The pic that I labeled is real tung oil. Got it from Real Milk Paint Company. I looked all over the city and all I could find were the various ones like Minwax, Formby's etc. True tung oil doesn't have much shine at all and you have to really leave a heavy coat and lots of them to get any build up. It works very much like BLO and protects from moisture a good bit better. That's the main reason I want to go with it. I probably will finish it with the Tom's mix, that's good stuff.

The brown you mention is actually Watco Danish Oil for the most part. It's made from BLO, stain and a bunch of mineral spirits to get it to penetrate. I added a tung oil based stain and cut it with mineral spirits to tint it a bit off of brown. A touch of red makes a richer more authentic looking color. It didn't really come out in the pic. If I stain that's what it will be followed with tung. Some stained birch stocks that I've seen are actually pretty cool looking. The blotches give a tiger stripe look sometimes. But I'd never get that lucky....

Edit: On second thought I might just go look for some Fiebing's to play with. Does Hobby Lobby have it or do I have to find a leather shop?

The Watco oil is a good product. I have never used it, but I see people swear by it when working specifically on Garand stocks. If I remember correctly a lot of people were using the dark walnut and teak oils that already had a stain pre-mixed. It's a mix of varnish, BLO, and MS so it does protect the wood better than just straight BLO or PTO. If that's the route that you end up going, I wouldn't bother adding any sort of a top coat other than the Tom's mix to seal it. I would definitely try using some quality pre-stain conditioner before applying anything to the stock. I've seen some people use the technique of sanding the Watco into the wood with high grit sandpaper. It leaves a gorgeous sheen. I wouldn't use the sandpaper method on the stock, but you might try doing some research and see if it can be applied with steel or bronze wool using an oil scrub method (scrubbing the oil into the stock with wetted wool). An easy way to tell how the stock will take on oil (and if there is any tiger striping or figuring) is to wet it down with MS. Normally it will look pretty much identical to wood with one or two coats of unstained oil.

The Fiebings dyes just seem to bring out lots of red when applied to birch. Below is a before picture showing that there wasn't much, if any, color to the stock before it was refinished. I'm not sure if anyone in town carries the dye, but if they did I would assume that a leather shop should carry it. I have purchased all of my Fiebings dyes on Ebay. Just be sure to get the alcohol based dyes...there are water based Fiebings versions out there and they do not work near as well.

Here are a few photos for reference...

PTO on CMP new replacement birch stock.

Dark oil based stain on CMP new replacement birch stock. Blotchy and overall pretty bad looking. The Watco finish would look much better than this, especially if pre-stain conditioner was used.

Before photo of the stock that was refinished with Fiebings.

 

[Sanjuro82]

Don't use the Formby's finish, there's no Tung Oil in that. I use this when I want a true tung oil finish.
http://www.amazon.com/Accumetric-Pu...EIBK/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1319981813&sr=8-4

 

[Shadowrider]

Here's what it looks like this morning. I used citristrip, left it on overnight and scrubbed it down with a scotchbrite pad and warm soapy water early this morning. Still a bit wet, it should lighten up a bit more as it dries.

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[Shadowrider]

Don't use the Formby's finish, there's no Tung Oil in that. I use this when I want a true tung oil finish.
http://www.amazon.com/Accumetric-Pu...EIBK/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1319981813&sr=8-4

No way I'm using that stuff. I knew it was basically a varnish when I tried it. But I just wanted to see what it looked like compared to a real oil finish like Watco.

This is what I got. That stuff you have is probably the exact same stuff though.
http://www.realmilkpaint.com/oil.html



coolhand, thanks for the tip on checking with mineral spirits. Definitely gonna do that when I get it sanded out.

 

[Shadowrider]

Well the deed is done. At least there's no going back now. I had to go with the stain/oil concoction I came up with because I tried the tung oil on the underside of the rear hand guard and it looked yellow like that stock Coolhandluke refinished up above. I added some red stain for color tint because it was just too BROWN. At first I was a bit disappointed. All three pieces are different colors and look different in general. And the splotching came through with flying colors like I figured it would. It's birch what are you gonna do?

But after I wiped them down and stood back, it dawned on me. I nailed it!
This is a 2010 stock on a WWII rifle. It's not supposed to look like a fine English Holland and Holland or a grade IV Weatherby. It's supposed to look like it's been who knows where, done who knows what and by who knows whom. This 2010 stock looks pretty much like a 60 year old battle rifle stock should except for being all beat up. And it kind of looks like may have been in the past, it has a well used look to it from a distance. Overall I'm totally happy with it. It ain't walnut, but it does look period correct now.

Pics to follow....