April 27 - Finishing Off the Stock!

April 27 – Finishing off the Stock

Ok….so you may remember from a couple of postings ago that I decided to move on to the process of finishing the stock while I wait for the drill and tap on the receiver. 

The stock has been shaped now to its proper dimensions and everything seems to “feel” right.  My chief concern was to reduce the shelf (where the barrel meets the wood) to a nice 1/8 inch from the ¼ inch I started out with.  That has been done and the curvature of the wood around the fore end has a nice symmetrical geometry to it.

Now, the fun part!

I’ve partially removed the recoil pad, this will act as a “holder” so that I can manipulate the wet wood with the finish on it, and not mar it with finger prints.

To protect the wood from minor abrasions, but most importantly human oils, we need to get a protective “shell” on it.   A polyurethane coating is nice, and we will put one on at the end, but we want a deeper penetrating protection….for that we will use Linseed oil.

So here is what we’re going to do….we will pour a little linseed oil on the stock and use 600 grit sand paper as the application medium.  We will quite literally “sand” the oil into the wood.  This does two things…. it obviously will spread the oil about the woods surface,  but more importantly it will create a sawdust/linseed oil mixture in the process.  This paste product will be worked into the pours of the wood during the application process and harden into the wood.  Essentially we are filling the imperfections of the wood with itself!

 You can see at the bottom of the picture the area of the stock that has not had the oil applied yet, and the color difference between the two.

The other benefit of linseed oil is that it naturally brings out the color of the walnut (especially the marbling) without having to “color” it with stain.  What you see is what you get.  A beautiful specimen of American Walnut!

Now, we will need to let it sit for a while and dry. 

I will end up doing this exercise seven or eight times before it is complete, then I will do it again, this time with a polyurethane finish.  Once that is completed we can move on the checkering phase!