You guys got me fired up to try something I'd been thinking about for quite some time.

The finish on my WASR furniture was basically walnut stains, followed by Johnson's paste wax, done a couple of years ago.

Tonight I hopefully looked through the wife's spice cabinet and wahoo...I was right...there was a full bottle of food red dye in there.

I Q-Tip swabbed the red dye into the butt, buffing it off, applying more, et cetera until it looked pretty Russian. Then I did the hand guard which of course is a different wood and "took" differently. Into the medicine cabinet and there was some tincture of iodine. That brought the hand guard to a pretty close match. Then I waxed the butt, which lightened it some because it dissolved some of the food coloring. The butt is the layered wood construction, so there are grains that contrast-match the waxed hand guard and grains that do not.

I like the patterns formed by the laminations. I know it could be leveled with a tinted finish, but for now it will remain as is. Who knows...some day in the future I might read about re-doing AK furniture, and have another project again.