Restoring Rifles

“Can you make ‘em look better but not tampered with?” 

"Yes, sir!” said the kid.

Wiping oil-blackened hands on an apron of the same shade, the cadaverous proprietor plucked a nondescript rifle from the rack behind, dark under its dithering fluorescent bulb. “See these dings?” He leveled a bony finger at the forestock. The kid nodded. It bore enough dings that asking which seemed pointless. “Steam out the big dents. Leave a few honest scars, like a gun guy might expect. Take out fresh scratches, but don’t leave any clues that you did. Match the original finish best you can.”

“OK.” The kid peered solemnly at the wounds, as if plotting the erasure of some and the cosmetic surgery needed to make others respectable.

“Dull black wood doesn’t sell, yah? You’ll have to dig out some, uh, uh …,” the scarecrow raked his stubble with an oily finger for the word. “Color.”

The kid nodded, as sagely as he could. “How many….?”

“Many as you want.”

“OK.” The kid looked down, shuffled his feet, “How much … I mean … what’s….”

“Pay. Yah, yah. That depends on the result. Let’s start at $25 for each stock.”

I may have pocketed a couple of dollars for each hour spent making that first scarred walnut more presentable but not too presentable. Weeks later, I returned the rifle. Bringing it close to eye, the old man peered down his beak and grunted approval. An armload of bruised and neglected long guns followed me home. A bonanza in battered wood, thought I, licking my chops.    

Of that bundle, a Remington 700 came first to hand. A few scuffs and scratches to touch up. But a cruel surprise lurked in the stock’s glossy sheath of RKW polymer, borrowed from bowling pins. Unlike oil finish that could be feathered to blend with fresh oil, RKW didn’t feather. My attempts merely added scratches that called attention to the injury. I’ll have to take it all down to wood! More bad news followed: RKW proved all but impervious to paint stripper; it had to be abraded off. Hard, tiresome work, sanding required a careful hand, lest it dish or ripple flats or blunt edges. Sanding behind grip caps, in comb flutes, against tangs, and along fore-stock lips could be especially tricky. 

I would find Weatherby Mark V rifles, and others, wore equally obstinate finishes.

Turnbull Restoration brought this Winchester 1892 Deluxe Takedown to life. The checkering and case coloring and bluing are masterfully done.  

Projects from that gun shop long ago might have cured me of trying to spruce up worn rifles. But I learned much from the servitude and am loath to waste an education. Now, dozens of rifle and shotgun stocks later, I still relish the chance to revive walnut, to re-ignite color and figure veiled by garish stains and thick coats of unspeakable goop, by age, dirt, and gun oil. 

Nursing rifle stocks back to health was once cheap entertainment. In my youth, Sears, Roebuck, and other mail-order firms peddled surplus infantry rifles for as little as $15. I recall 1903 Springfields at $29.95. If battle bruises—more often rack damage—annoyed the new owner, he could sand out blemishes and re-varnish. “Sporterizing” might include lopping the forestock just behind the central barrel band and fitting a recoil pad. An ambitious lad could cough up $10 for a semi-inletted walnut blank, then complete the shaping and apply finish. I paid $7.50 for a plain stick from Herters, the Minnesota mail-order source for all wonders useful in the woods, whose brick-thick wish books infested school lockers of wayward youths. With crude tools foreign to any stock-maker, I fought that walnut into submission. The tasteless result replaced the issue stock on a .303 Short Magazine Lee Enfield that would tumble my first whitetail.

To early sawyers, the supply of American black walnut must have seemed inexhaustible—as did old-growth pine forests in the upper Midwest and redwoods and Sitka spruce on the Pacific Coast. Short decades later, however, aggressive logging had toppled forests centuries in the making. Walnut went fast. Ideal for gun-stocks, it was hard but easier to work than oak, also lighter in weight and less apt to shatter. Quilted maple was prized but scarce, and its pallor begged a stain. Hickory lacked walnut’s warm colors. 

A caveat: Revival and restoration differ. Restoring an old Packard, automobile buffs don’t slap on a set of alloy wheels, however attractive. Only original parts or true-to-spec replacements will do. A rifle altered in form, finish, or components is not restored. Call it revived or resurrected, renovated or renewed. 

As our frontier rolled west, Edward Cox Bishop saw a business opportunity in walnut. On the eve of the Depression, he moved to Warsaw, Missouri, and with his son John, built a sawmill. His first stocks went to Remington for shotguns. In 1935 he began turning out semi-finished rifle-stocks. Four years later, he invited Reinhard Fajen of nearby Stover to join his company. Fajen custom-finished Bishop stocks. WW II took the men on different paths, but both returned to their walnut. In 1949 John Bishop, who’d acquired his father’s interest in the business, suggested to Fajen that they merge. This marriage lasted a couple of years; then Bishop sold out to Jack Pohl, a relative. Fajen started his own company and by the 1990s, had 80 employees producing stocks for 200 models of shotguns and rifles! Warsaw was now “walnut central” stateside. In 1992 Larry Potterfield bought the Reinhard Fajen Gunstock Company. In ‘95, starting work on an upscale wood factory in Lincoln, north of Warsaw, Potterfield acquired Bishop. But demand failed to sustain his new stock-making venture; it closed in 1998.

Prices for walnut have tracked dwindling supplies. A decade ago, gun-maker Roger Biesen, heir to the shop that under his father Al had supplied writer Jack O’Connor with his most favored rifles, fumed that he’d just paid $2,250 for a stick of figured French walnut. “A blank!” he growled. “That’s as much as we used to charge for a finished rifle!” Now even ordinary walnut is expensive. Cheaper woods, mostly birch and beech, have supplanted it on entry-level rifles. Laminated stocks are stronger and more stable, but heavier. Another option: stocks with attractive walnut slabs either side of laminated cores.     

A few decades ago, surplus 1903 Springfields sold for $29.95. Many were “sporterized.” Though still relatively common in this condition, these rifles may lose some trade value if altered.

Installing an after-market stock or whittling one from U.S.-sourced wood costs much less than having an ace stocker bring his talents to thin-shelled European walnut. Boyds Custom Gunstocks, near Mitchell, South Dakota, helps with DIY projects. Fifty-odd years ago, young Randy Boyd swapped an ailing Plymouth for two Mauser rifles, which he prettied up and peddled. He bought a two-spindle stock duplicator for his shop, “a grainery whose wood stove barely thawed the walls in winter.” Three high-volume duplicators helped furnish 100 stocks a week for Rogue Rifle Co., maker of Chipmunk .22s. CNC machines followed. Now run by Justin Knutson and his crew in a 50,000-square-foot plant, Boyds sells precisely machined drop-in stocks, solid and laminated, fully and semi-finished, checkered and not, in a host of styles for nearly every rifle and shotgun you can name. 

Instead of replacing wood stocks, you can revive them, stripping the finish, mending minor flaws, and freshening details. I’ve fitted and checkered plugs in chipped forends, repaired tang splits, replaced tired recoil pads. So tended and given a rich oil finish, a dowdy stock can look and perform “like new.”

A caveat: Revival and restoration differ. Restoring an old Packard, automobile buffs don’t slap on a set of alloy wheels, however attractive. Only original parts or true-to-spec replacements will do. A rifle altered in form, finish, or components is not restored. Call it revived or resurrected, renovated or renewed. A few shops, notably Turnbull Restoration, specialize in restoring firearms, from re-stocking to re-cutting inscriptions in steel and matching original blue. Turnbull gussies up guns, old and new, with nitre-blued screws and furniture, case-colored frames, special sights.

Your first step in making a tired gun look better is to resolve, like a surgeon before operating, to do no harm. Historically significant arms are usually best left alone. Rare guns, too. Of 581,471 Model 70 Winchesters built before the rifle’s 1963 overhaul, just 362 were in .300 Savage. These now fetch lofty prices. Re-bluing one or re-finishing its stock would drain a pile of coin from its trade value.

On ordinary rifles, a battered, weathered stock can get a big cosmetic boost from re-finishing. No special talents required—only the discipline to pause often. Wood removed is forever gone. Metalwork, unless you’re a machinist, is best left to pros. A re-blue merits careful thought. Modest blue wear is often preferable to shiny new finish that’s clearly not original. Even in reputable shops, buffing before bluing often dishes screw holes, dulls edges, and leave waves in flats. There’s no fix to such sacrilege!   

Oil finishes lend themselves to stock revival. This “oil” is not petroleum-based gun oil. It comes from plants. Tung oil (from the pressed seeds of tung tree nuts) and linseed oil dry, cure, or polymerize in air. To speed drying, you’ll want boiled linseed oil, not raw. Commercial oil finishes, like George Bros. (GB) Lin-Speed and Birchwood Casey’s Tru-Oil, dry faster still. Curt Crum, who for decades finished the stunning walnut on David Miller’s custom rifles, used Daly’s Teak Oil over water-thin sealer.

Finishes on production-line stocks can be hard to match, not because they’re better than you can apply but because they’re developed to save time and labor and adjusted to use available ingredients. The first Model 70 stocks had a clear lacquer finish over stain and filler. Carnauba wax in these lacquers gave the result a warm glow. Stick shellac repaired flaws. Unlike shellac (whose Sanskrit root referencing tree or beetle secretions informs both words), water-repellent lacquers cure without imparting an amber color. When WW II drained supplies of carnauba wax, harder lacquers replaced it in civilian industry. 

The fore-stock on this 1893 Marlin could be revived, but the butt-stock has fared better. Leave it alone?

Natural oil finishes respond to chemical strippers you’ll use to prep a stock for refinishing. Thick “goopy” strippers slathered on cling to the wood. After letting it curdle for 15 minutes, use steel wool or, on flat surfaces, a metal scraper to sweep away loosened finish. Mind wood-grain direction as you scrub stubborn and recessed patches. Apply stripper to checkering with a toothbrush; then brush out the loose finish, let the checkering dry, then mask it. Keep stripper off metal, rubber, and plastics.

Once old finish is removed, you’re ready to lift dents. Cover each with a wet washcloth and apply a hot iron. Steam will lift compressed wood fibers. As the block-sanding required to level a deep dent can remove a lot of wood, you might best steam out what you can and leave what remains as “character.” A chip or a notch cut for a receiver sight begs a patch. Clean up edges with a knife or a fine file, then shape a wood patch of similar color and grain for a tight fit. Glue it in and sand to the surface. 

Flint is the oldest abrasive glued to paper and possibly inspired the word “sandpaper.” It’s still the cheapest option. Garnet paper has sharper cutting edges and lasts longer. Aluminum oxide is also sharp and durable. Blue-black silicon carbide has the keenest edges of common abrasives. Used mainly on soft metals and leather, it is very hard and brittle. Emery’s rounded crystals cut slowly; they excel at polishing. 

Coarse to fine, sandpaper grit is numbered. Traditional digits—0, 2/0, 3/0, etc.--have given way to grit designations from 16 to 600 and higher, representing counts of sieve openings. While ordinary paper backing is adequate for most block-sanding, cloth-backed abrasives work better in tight places and on curves. Choose sanding grit just coarse enough to get desired results. Unless removing lots of wood or re-shaping, stay with 220 or finer. Remember, you must remove all sanding marks with the next grade of abrasive! Ditto for steel wool, which still goes by the “ought” system: 0 for coarse to 0000 for extra-fine. 

As sanding blocks, art-gum and hard rubber erasers help keep flat surfaces flat and edges sharp. Without a block, finger pressure leaves surface ripples. Paper creeps over edges, rounding them. Edges should actually become sharper as you block-sand. Just before applying new finish, they can be blunted slightly with fine paper. I use 1/2-, 3/4- and 1-inch dowels as blocks for sanding curved surfaces, such as comb flutes and under the grip cap. There, 000 steel wool can substitute for emery paper.

Sand in a well-lighted place. Sunlight is best! Examine the stock often. You’ll want to find and erase scratches before they appear under new finish. Leave the wood abutting metal for last. Finished, it should stand slightly proud of the steel. To ensure against blunting or removing too much wood at these junctures, I limit sanding there to a few swipes with blocked wet-or-dry emery paper, 400 then 600 grit.    

Having eliminated all sanding and steel wool marks, dust the stock with a tack rag. You may find tiny scratches. A thin coat of boiled linseed oil, immediately wiped off, can also reveal them.

Use a toothbrush with paint-stripper to get old finish out of checkering. Then mask it. As a last step in finishing, unmask the checkering, then brush in boiled linseed oil to match the new finish and repel water.

Except to match the original look of stained wood, I don’t use stain, preferring natural color, even on maple. Also, stain can turn out blotchy, as open-pored parts of the stock absorb it more readily than do hard sections. There’s no easy fix for blotches. Trying to remove stain is a Sisyphean challenge.

Next step: filling pores. Miles Gilbert stock re-finishing kits include an excellent filler. But I’ve often used spar varnish. Thicker than most oils, it still penetrates. It dries fast and all but water-proofs the wood. Porous wood may require multiple coats. Cut dried buildup between them with sandpaper or steel wool. When pores shine at the surface, I polish the stock with fine steel wool.
Before applying finish (or filler), suspend a coat-hanger, hook down, to snare the magazine well. You’ll want the stock hanging to dry.

I rub in boiled linseed oil vigorously by hand until the wood doesn’t want any more, and continue rubbing until the oil gets hot under the friction of my hand. Thinning with turpentine helps oil penetrate. Let the stock hang until that first coat has been absorbed and the wood is dry to the touch. Then hand-rub in more finish until it’s hot, polish off any excess with a cloth and let dry. Over the next weeks, add finish in thin coats, ensuring each is dry before applying the next. Dry time may increase. The secret of a fine oil finish is microscopically thin coats thoroughly cured! If the finish gums up, you must start over. I usually allow at least a month for finishing after pore-sealing. Most of that is drying time—and I live in an arid, high-desert climate. One ace stocker gave a deserving stick of French walnut 25 coats!

When satisfied with the look of the stock, unmask the checkering. Douse it with boiled linseed oil and scrub that in with a toothbrush. Wipe off spatter with a cloth. Brush and wipe until the checkering and surrounding wood are dry. One or two coats in checkering should color it like the rest of the wood. Too much oil will make checkering dark.

If examining a near-dry stock, you see a rough spot or the start of a gummy patch, rub in a slurry of rottenstone and boiled linseed oil to feather the flaw into surrounding finish. Buff, rub in fresh oil until it’s hot, let dry and buff again. Do this periodically to refresh oil finish, especially after the rifle has been exposed to wet weather. This refresher is best not done with faster-drying oils.