Cleaning and waterproofing a stock

[magyars4]

Gentlemen,
I lucked into a straight stocked Marlin 336 dated to 1967...It has the usual handling marks and discolored wood.
It also had double sided tape on the stock.
I want to keep the stock in as close as possible to the current color & wear.
What would be a good way to clean it without loosing the character of the wood and what would be the best way to water proof it? I considered steel wool and wax but I am concerned with removing too much of the finish.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[Tycer]

Double pairs of dish washing gloves, near-boiling water, turpentine and boiled linseed oil. A couple of ounces of each in a quart of water and a coarse cotton rag like a bar towel. Rub and scrub. The turpentine will remove years of finger prints and excess oil and the linseed will soak into and protect the wood without harming the finish. After a few days wax with carnuba or Renaissance wax.

[Gleedaniel13]

I will say you have collected a lot there. That was perseverance.

[Pete44ru]

.

What has worked for me, over the past 30-odd years, is to wipe down the wood with a pad of OOOO (fine) grade of steel wool, loaded with FORMBY'S Furniture Refinisher (just follow the can directions), followed by TruOil finish coats after the refinisher has dried.

No sanding, unless there's an area that requires a repair prior to refinishing.




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[Homer]

Take a good picture of it to remember the color. Sand off all of the finish and smooth the wood to perfection. If the color of the wood is correct, then simply coat with Formby's Tung Oil. If color needs to enhanced, use a non-oil stain, and then coat with Formby's Tung Oil. The Tung oil applies evenly and penetrates the wood for a good finish with true moisture protection. In fact, make sure you like everything about the stock before applying the Tung Oil because it will penetrate into the wood and will not accept stains or any other coating until it is removed down to where it penetrated. It is a very tough moisture resistant finish.

Before plastic stocks, I'd refinish all of the exposed parts of my wood stocks with Tung Oil and finish all of the hidden parts with spar varnish. They were then sealed and remained stable regardless of the weather. Now I mostly use plastic. Good luck and have fun.

[magyars4]

Thanks Gents...Homer I was leaning towards tung oil.....after cleaning the stock up....

[92&94]

There are about as many answers to the question as there are people out there finishing wood

I would probably use mineral spirits or alcohol to remove the tape and grime, whichever seems to work best and maybe one after the other. Neither should harm the original finish, though either will probably soften it some so too much elbow grease removing the tape can cause you to damage the original finish. If the factory finish is shellac rather than some kind of varnish, then alcohol will potentially dissolve it.

As to refinishing, anything you like the look of will do about as good a job as anything else. The only true waterproofing you'll find is to have it fully resin stabilized which is expensive and pretty impractical.

Tung oil, boiled linseed, polyurethane, all will work about as well as the next, the main difference is the look and feel for the user. Most of the commercial tung oil finishes have little or no tung oil in them, just soy oils and driers. Raw tung oil is a good water repelling finish, but it tends to feel tacky (part of the reason its good at water repelling). The commercial "oil" finishes are more like a varnish than a raw oil finish.