doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Wood cleaning

Today I decided to pull out a few Smiths and clean them up a bit prior to a show I am displaying at. I use Old English Lemon Oil on the wood. I have always in the past, wiped the wood down with this oil and then let it sit until dry. I would then follow that with Johnson's paste wax. My question is, is it necessary to always follow the Lemon Oil Treatment with a good coat of wax? Or can one skip a few treaments of wax and use only the Lemon oil?

Beats the feces out of me. I just use Goddard's Cabinet Makers Wax and follow steps uno and dos on the back of the tin.

Jason, I wonder if lemon oil is the right thing to put on a gunstock. Now, I'm not saying one way or the other but I just recently spent days cooking oil out of a Webley. The goo appeared to be something like lemon oil and it had penetrated all the way through the wood and never dried. I couldn't get it all out and gave up in disgust, returning the gun to the seller. Seems to me that repeated applications will tend to soften the wood, especially important where it is headed to the action. Whoever in the future has the pleasure of refinishing it will have a miserable, if not impossible, situation. I, for one, would never put a non-drying oil on a gunstock. Stick to a good wax such as suggested by Jagermeister. Or, rub in very light coats of linseed or tung oil. To see what you've done with lemon oil, warm the stock and see if the oil bubbles out--if so, it's not pretty!