Birch Stock Refinishing with Pure Tung Oil

[Yosef]

I recently purchased a Ruger Mini-14 5816 with the hardwood stock. Love the rifle...but I prefer all of my firearms to have a Tung Oil finish. Decided that I wanted to refinish the stock and, after contacting the company and doing some research, I found out that the stock was birch.

This led me to research what others have done previously that led me to the conclusion that birch is incredibly difficult to stain and darken. As I'm sure most of you know it ends up blotching most of the time. Because I use Real Milk Paint Tung Oil products, I was intrigued by the Dark Tung Oil that they offer. Also found this post helpful where someone applied this product to a birch stock but it came out blotchy. I decided to apply it full strength instead of thinning it with the hope that it would not be as blotchy.

To make a long story short I wanted to post my process here in case anyone was interested in stripping the original finish and applying a similar finish:

• Applied CitriStrip liberally across the entire stock.
• Let sit for 24 hours and scrape off with a hard plastic edge.
• Applied CitriStrip again to lift out remaining stain for similar time and scraped off excess.
• Used a rag between stock and iron and steamed the remaining stain to the surface and wiped off.
• At this point all of the stain was lifted and I sanded with the grain lightly with 180 grit, wet with water and allowed to dry, sanded with 220 grit, wet with water and allowed to dry, sanded with 320 grit. It should be noted that I barely sanded the connection points where the metal touches the wood.
• Wiped off all of the sawdust and poured full-strength Real Milk Paint Dark Tung Oil into a cup. Wiped on to stock with a rag and kept just enough oil on the stock to keep it wet. For 40 minutes I constantly applied a little more oil to the entire stock to keep it wet as it soaked in.
• Then...wipe off excess.
• I applied many more coats until the stock stopped absorbing the tung oil.

I should have taken photos of the entire process but I have a flip phone. Wish it were darker but I'm pretty happy with the result. Could probably get it darker by thinning out the tung oil but I don't want to risk making it more blotchy.

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[TDIfan]

Looks nice!

[Rosco the Iroc]

very nice

[Noah_Zark]

I like it very much; you did a great job and IMO it was well worth the effort.

Noah

[Emptymag]

Perfect.

Thanks for sharing!

[Jhaydeno]

Fantastic, nice work!