Tips for refinishing Birch stocks?

[W.R.Buchanan]

I am currently refinishing the wood on my Stevens 311SxS Shotgun. The wood is Birch and the fore end is completely devoid of grain. I did some Sharpie Grain Enhancement which looked bad so I removed most of it with Acetone. The Butt stock was a little more interesting but not by much!

Today I soaked them in French Red Stain from Brownell's it is not blotchy in any way. In fact it is bringing out grain that was not evident before.

After I fill all the low spots I will start with a coat a day of Tru Oil, until everything is filled, then we'll see what it looks like in the sun.

The color so far is pushing towards the Winchester Red that I like and if it comes in a little darker that will be fine, and if it looks anything like your Marlin I'll be jumping up and down.

The thread is in the casting for shotguns forum here. http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...ance-Usability You can see what I started with and the fore end before I started staining. I will post pics there when done.

I have found that lots fo times wood that appears to be featureless exposes much character after just removing the paint that all too often passes as stock finish on Generic guns. Marlins are especially good candidates as their stocks are actually made from some kind of Walnut (at least the older ones were) and I have had really good luck making them look nice. I've posted pics here several times.

Randy

[Gabby]

Some of y'all have a love hate relationship with BLO, well look up Lin Speed on the net and get real BLO that can finish as fine or as soft as you like depending on how many hand rubbed coats you apply. I have a maple stocked CVA plains type ML that turned out to have curly / fiddle back grain, that I hit with one coat of red maple stain,that I wiped off immediately, and 16 hand rubbed coats of Lin Speed, it ripples in the sun like it's alive, and it's over 40 years old without adding wax of any kind. Still looks good as new! Nice part if you get a ding you can refinish without having to strip the whole thing. Just touch it up and hand rub some more Lin Speed on till you match the rest of the wood.
No I don't own stock or work for them, it's a small family owned company. I just really like the product.
Gabby
One of the things I really like is the slightly tacky feel it has that makes it have a grippy feel and not slippery. On plain wood it will give a slightly darkened yellow finish, Walnut loves it, I used it on Spalted Sycamore and that came out great.
The product isn't dirt cheap but a small bottle is good for several rifle stocks.
I posted a step by step of the Sycamore 10-22 stock over on RimfireCentral if you care to see how it came out, might even have a photo or 2 of the CVA, I don't remember now.