To be 100% honest, I have always thought the shaping and finishing of a stock was
really hard. Now to be clear, my work is far from perfect, but I have always stayed clear of this
kind of work worrying that I might mess something up. The procedure I followed was basic.
First, I took the block of wood and in a vice began sanding, working from an 80-grit paper all the way up to a 600-grit paper. Next, I used a Tact Cloth to remove any dust and I repositioned the wood in the vice. From there I used MINWAX Gunstock 231 and a staining sponge and applied one coat to the smooth sections and let dry for 5 hours, though the can said 4 hours was fine. Finally, I applied MINWAX Tung oil, let sit for ten minutes and buffed it into the wood as instructed. Wait 24 hours, apply another coat of Tun Oil, waited another 24 hours and then I was ready to lay down my checkering pattern.
Checkering the wood before you apply any type of stain or varnish can be a bad idea for a few reasons. Based on some of the things I see online this can be tricky and ill-advised
because you just created a ton of different channels on the wood by checkering and when
applying stain, it can pool up in the checkering leaving a darker stain than the rest of the stock. Another reason this could be a bad idea is because once a varnish is applied it can also fill the checkering design and this takes away from the grip one wants to feel when using a firearm with a checkered stock.
I think that if someone brought me a gunstock instead of a wood blank, I would probably consider offering a full-service job where I remove any stain or varnish from the wood and work from the ground up. Sure, if the customer just wants me to checker his beat-up old stock, I would because its business. However, I believe that if you could show them what kind of finished product comes from doing this then they may opt for you to do the full job. Besides, matching a stain and finish can be hard and the customer may not like the result even if the checkering was done right.
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