Stock finishing question

[MGMorden]

Hi.  Yesterday I got in a new stock for my one of my Mauser 98 rifles (my Turk mauser that I had worked into a .257 Roberts).  The stock is a Richard's Microfit and I think it's going to finish up into a great looking stock, but there's certainly more work involved than I had originally imagined it to be.

The inletting was actually pretty close to where it needed to be - with just a little initial sanding I managed to get the action bolted into the stock.  Here are my issues though:

1. There are definitely some areas of pressure on the action that I want to eliminate.  When you pick the gun up and touch it in various areas you can hear a little "creek" where the metal and wood are touching and putting pressure on one another.  What is the best way to identify the exact areas that need to be relieved to eliminate this pressure?

2. The front of the stock is unfortunately just squared off rather than coming up to a curved ending.  There are also some other sharp cornered parts of the stock such as the top-sides directly rear of the action.  My best guess on how to curve these into a smooth surface was to take a sanding block, some medium grit sandpaper and just work them into a curve.  Particularly on the front though, this kinda worries me on getting everything to look symmetrical and curving both sides equally.  Is there some nice trick to this or is it just a matter of keeping a close eye on it and going slow?

3. I want to remove the installed 1/2" recoil pad before I start to apply any finish, but looking at the back of it I see no screw holes - leaving me to believe that it may be glued into place (maybe not - just a guess on my part).  Is there any way to safely remove such a pad or should I just mask it off when applying finish?

4. As to finish, I've got walnut stock filler, but this particular stock is made of myrtle so the coloring wouldn't match.  Naturally there are some slight pores in the wood that need to be smoothed out.  I'm leaning towards using Formby's Tung Oil as a finish for this particular stock (since IIRC, it's clear and I want to keep the look of the myrtle intact. I've used Tru-oil on some stocks before but it appears to have some stain in it which I want to avoid), so would simply building up coats of the finish smooth out those pores, or should I look to some other form of wood filler?

Thanks for any and all advice offered.

[ftlupton]

Have done many stocks so here goes. As to fit, have to get some inletting black or someway to coat action. Install and carefully take out wood where black shows. This will take time and patience but is the only way. Take a little extra out and use Acra-Glas from Brownells or bought locally, read and reread the directions. USE Lots of release agent and practice on a piece of 2"x 4" and piece of pipe. This will give you a fit like a fine glove and will shoot better. Free float the barrell(usually) is more accurate. If you can slide a dollar bill between the barrel and the stock all the way down to the action it is "free floated". As to finish, that is your choice but I use Tru-oil thinned 50/50 with mineral spirits to fill the pores then very light coats till satisfied, Tung oil is fine too. Do some research and see if this fits your skill level and desires and go for it. Stock making is a great hobby.

[victorcharlie]

I've been working on a Richards Micro fit for a couple of months or so.  I bought a classic Monte Carlo in a semi fancy bastone Walnut. As a matter of fact, I put another coat of tru oil on it tonight.  Not sure how many coats I've got already but it's a bunch.

As far as shaping, you might want to try a big wood rasp or file, then go to paper.

I shaped mine, sanded and put a half a dozen coats of tru oil on it before pillar and glass bedding so as not to fill the pores of the wood with bedding compound in the event that my tape job might miss a spot..

The dollar bill test is also what I use as far as finding tight spots.  A deep socket wrapped with sand paper is what I used on this one.

As far as the finish, I start rubbing with 50/50 tru oil/mineral spirit mix applied by hand and sanding with 320 grit between coats.  After 8 or so coats, I switch to 400 and wet sand, wipe it down with mineral spirits, then a tack cloth and spray the tru oil on with an air brush.  I cut it about 60% tru oil to 40 % mineral spirits as in current weather 50/50 tends to run and 60/40 is a bit more forgiving.

Tonight I switched to 800 grit and am just about satisfied with the finish.

As far as rounding off the rosewood tip, a rasp works really well, just start on the corners and go for it.  Also rasp the areas you want rounded.  This is much quicker than sand paper IMO, and much easier to shape with a rasp.

I cut mine down to fit me and have a grind to fit pacmeyer ready to install.

I would agree the tru oil has a darkening effect and defiantly has an orange tint to it.  I like it because it's easy to touch up when necessary.

For heavy fills in knots and such you might give Salley Hansons Hard as Nails a try.  It fills well, dries clear, and is easily sanded.

[MGMorden]

Thanks for the advice guys.  I've been proceeding somewhat like victorcharlie mentioned.  The top part of the action seemed to drop right in after just a tad more additional sanding. The triggerguard still goes in a little tight nothing serious. 

I took a wooden dowel wrapped in 60 grit and was able to notch out a spot for the bolt handle pretty quickly.  After I had it deep enough I went back over it with 120 grit to smooth it out a bit more.  For the sharp corners I ended up taking the 60 grit paper to those too and just working off the hard edges (for the top I basically just cupped the paper in my hand and kept turning it over the tip of the stock until the corners started rounding out.  It's not really completely rounded at the end - just the corners are smoothed out and rounded (but the tip is still flat), but I think I've done about as well as I'm going to get given my current skill level .

After that I've started working on the surface of the entire stock.  The general roughness was taken out by a good pass of 120 grit paper followed by some 320 grit, but there are still some tooling marks and such visible (hard to find all of them though).  What I've done is gave it an initial rubbing of Formby's Tung Oil which makes the imperfections easier to see.  I let that dry for roughly 24 hours and then go back over it with a close eye looking for tooling marks, deep pores, or any "scratchy" looking sections from previous sanding.  Once I identify a problem area I hit it with the 120 grit paper, followed by 220 grit, and then 320 grit which has worked well at smoothing out most of those areas.  After sanding a given area though the dust makes it a bit hard to see any more problems, so I've been just applying another overall coat and repeating the process.

I'm about to the point now where I have the surface smoothed out as much as I'd like.  I put on another coat last night and when I get home if the visual inspection checks out I'm going to transition to 400 grit paper across the whole stock between coats.  After several coats with that I've also got 600 grit paper to move up to.  After that I ran into a problem in that the hardware store didn't have anything between 600 grit and 1500 grit.  I'm going to try and go between those two directly but if that doesn't work I'll try and find an intermediate somewhere.

So far it's turning out well.  This will be my first stock that I've started from scratch sanding and finishing.  I've stripped off and refinished quite a few before, but I always took for granted how much work actually went into getting the stock surface smoothed out after the cutting/tooling stage .

The only negative is that I had Richard's install a 0.5" recoil pad, and when I went to remove it it's both screwed and glued on, and the glue seems strong enough that I'm not getting the pad off without damaging something.  As such I'm having to do my best to mask and avoid the pad when finishing.  That really, really irks me as the sensible thing would seem to be to just take the pad off when finishing and replace it when the finish is applied, but I'm pretty much stuck working within these limitations.

Thanks for the advice.

[victorcharlie]

I sprayed another coat on tonight after wet sanding with 800 grit.  Darn it's looking pretty nice.  Maybe tommorrow I'll know if it's worth going to 1500 grit or calling it good enough.

What style stock did you get?

[MGMorden]

What style stock did you get?

Well, I had ordered a Modern Classic, but they ended up sending a Custom Rollover.  I figured it was close enough and decided to just keep this one rather than making an issue over it.  The wood is semi-fancy myrtle.  It has some incredible color and figure in the forearm area that tapers off into a straight grain towards the buttstock.  Overall I'm satisfied with it, and will quite likely use them again.

I'm looking at buying a Howa 1500 barreled action soon (6.5x55 if/when they show up on Gunbroker) and am looking at the Old Classic style in Grade A fancy English Walnut.  For that one I'm hoping to have a Niedner steel buttplate fitted.