doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DIY Gunsmithing @ doublegunshop.com Wood and oil!

I have soaked, heated, soaked and heated to the point where I�m afraid if I do it more bad things will happen. At this point what else is there to do?

try some diluted purple power, don't soak in in it, just poor it over the head and scrub. It will start foaming a brown foam, rinse with warm water. Slowly let it dry, repeat as needed. I just did one that did not want to stop dripping a dark brown oil. A few trips through the purple solution and it is much better. A couple more acetone baths and some denatured alcohol and I should be good to go. One thing about the acetone soaks is you do not need or want to leave them in for hours on end. 20 minutes is fine, let it do its job and the dry out. Better lots of short soaks then a few long ones. It takes quite a bit of solvent but that is what works for me. Good luck Rick.
Steve

P.S. I find that bird dog hair improves most projects as well

Oh man, we are having a hell of a time with our Pointer, as he has gotten older his allergies have gotten pretty bad, topped with 80 to 90 degrees with no rain this summer, it has been an uphill battle with the shedding! And yes we do vacuum, its just hard to keep up with it! Thanks for the advise. I put a bridle on it, there wasn�t much if any oil in the wood when I piloted the bridle. I�ll try and the purple power.

Situations like this is where I resort to hanging the stock in the oven, with a pan under it and raising the temp slowly to as hot as you need to to get the oil running out of it.
You will be amazed how much will come out of it. I found it really starts flowing around 300 degrees. You can periodically remove it to wipe down with acetone to get it off the surface.

Brian thanks! I have given it 3 oven treatments at 275, the wood started to dry out and crack so I stopped there, I think I have taken it as far as I can. Maybe one more soak and oven treatment.

When you put it in a window with sun on it, is liquid oil still coming up to the surface?

Whiting Powder.
You can do the acetone soaks, oven cleaner slathers and Super Purple dips,,but the oil is deep down. Sometimes completely through the wood.
It isn't going to run or be drawn to the surface and then disappear in a day or two by some heat from the sun or an oven either.

Yes you can get a lot of it out that way and it's satisfying to see the stuff drip out of the wood or discolor the chemical soak that it sets in it for a time.
I use some of these too for getting the really heavy stuff off the surface.

But you have to draw the oil to the surface,,all of it,,every last bit of it,,and then absorb it off of the wood surface and carry it away from the surface if you want to have a stock that will no bleed oil later on.

This is what Whiting Powder does and does well.
The problem people have with it is that it is a slow process and that does not set well in todays 'Is it done yet?' mentality.
You can substitute things like kitty litter (dried clay) for the whiting powder, but it just doesn't do the same job.

No need to mix the Whiting in acetone to make the paste as it seems is always stated. Common alcohol will do.
The liquid used to make up the paste will have little if nothing to do with how much oil the whiting absorbs from the wood.
It's only job is it being a way to apply the stuff to the wood surface from being the fine powder that it is to a hard shell surrounding & clinging to the wood surface that you want.
If acetone is used,,that will be evaporated in a matter of seconds.
Alcohol,,it'll take a minute or two perhaps.

Mix up a paste of the whiting powder and apply to the wood with a brush. Daubing and carefully brushing it onto the wood. It doesn't have to be pretty, just completely cover the wood surface.

The coating of whiting that dries and forms a hard crust shell attached firmly to the wood surface will remain there till it's brite white color changes to a brown/yellow indicating it's absorbed about all the oil it can.

That crust is very brittle, so handle the stock carefully.
Just let it hang somewhere out of the way and do it's thing.
The oil coming to the surface is being carted out and most importantly off of the wood and being held in the whiting crust.

When you think it's about spent,,simply brush the whiting crust off (a dusty process!).
Then reapply another coating and let it hang again.
It'll do the color change once again as it absorbs more oil.
Repeat till the coating(s) do not change color,,they stay white indicating no more oil absorbed from the wood.

How long to let them hang?,,the color change will let you know. When they get nasty brown yellow,,dust the coating off and reapply.
It can take anywhere from a couple days to a week for one coating. Even more if I'm on the last couple coatings and I'm letting it set for a longer term to make sure the very last of the oil is drawn out.

Fast?,,no. But find other stuff to do. Certainly there's other things to be done on that gun or the other stack of projects in the corner.

No harm in having a bunch of stocks in rotation going thru the process. You have a tendency to allow them to hang longer that way (you forget about them!) and that's good. Longer the better.

When complete,,brush the final coating off as best you can. It'll leave some of the whiting powder stuck in the open grain.
Then rinse the wood with cool water under a faucet and using a soft brush and a toothe brush to further get the stuff removed.
The wood will look kind of dead now. But a bath in wood bleach will brighten it back up and even up the color,,remove any spots and dark areas from old marks, stains and finish.

Use oxalic acid / wood bleach. That's what it's made for.
Don't use Laundry bleach. It'll bleach wood out too but the chemical is different and residue left in the wood will rust steel. (Like running a musty gun case thru the laundry w/a spot of bleach to freshen them up. Instant rust maker if you store a gun in them).

Savarin in one mfg of Wood Bleach at DIY stores though for some reason it's not as easily found as even a couple years ago. Crystal form, disolves in water.
Last time I just bought a 2gal can of Deck Cleaner,,label stated 'Oxalic Acid'. Cheap too, about $9.

I diluted that about 50/50 with water in a jar. MicroW for 30sec to just warm it up and brushed it on the wood liberally. It works perfectly.
Rinse once again with cool water when done and let the wood dry naturally.
No force or torch drying as that may check the wood.
Most all of any whiting stuck in the wood pores will be gone now. Any left will color with the finish or stain and finish when that time comes.

All these water rinse treatments won't harm the wood. The water doesn't penetrate very deep and the wood dries in a day or so. But give it some extra time before going to work on it.

Sorry for the long post,,
but that's the way I do it and it works well.

Thank you for your detailed explanation. You always have so much to give. You have helped me in the past and I appreciate all you do.

Thanks guys! It's a very inexpensive gun, with a pretty cool history, I think Kutter hit it the nail on the head, patience is what I need, I'll try the whiting and let it sit, the gun deserves that at least. Would heat with the whiting powder work? Or just let it hang out in the open?

you can do whiting powder with just water too, i use this method with water and just let it dry out, its amazing what it pulls out. no need to heat it though i always stand mine "head down" so gravity can assist.

European( read German) stock makers very often submerged new stocks in a barrel or vat of oil( linseed oil), until it absorbed all the oil it would take. Often times, this oil had coloring agents to darken the wood. This oil will not severely harm the wood, unlike petroleum based oils that may have soaked into the head of the stock over the years. It is understandable that efforts to remove all oil are very difficult and time consuming. It is not clear that removing a lot more than the petroleum based oil is absolutely necessary. I'm not trying to start a fight.
Mike

I've taken heavily soaked stocks and buried them in old style clay cat litter for months. Make sure it's a warm spot and change the litter occasionally. Patience is key. It took a long time getting in there, it takes a long time to come out. Six to eight months isn't unreasonable.

Kutter,

You don't ever have to apologize when your posts run long. There's always more than enough useful information there to keep me reading, regardless the length.

Thanks again, from me too.

SRH

Most kiln drying for hardwoods is done at around 175 degrees F, so 275 F is certainly going to be too high, and is going to cause cracking and excessive moisture loss. Imagine what would happen if you had gone even higher to 300 degrees F as recommended.

I agree with what Kutter said. Patience is needed when de-oiling a stock. It took many years, maybe decades for the oil to seep deep into your wood. Trying to get it out in a weekend project by using too much heat and harsh organic solvent soaks is likely to damage the structure of your stock. Here's some more tips from one of the many stock de-oiling threads.

https://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=482182&page=1

Maybe a vacuum chamber and kitty litter might speed the process. BTW, I used hand sanitizer to clean some cheapo Stevens .22 SS rifles, and it took lots of crud off fast. Just needed a wipe on Tung oil to finish the job. I use Forby's low gloss, with a pinch of red walnut dye powder added.

Is there another product that is the same as Brownell's whiting (or equal in performance) but that can be found in some retail type of store?

I ordered some whiting years ago and they sent a bottle of white chalk line chalk.

Whiting is calcium carbonate powder, as is white chalk line chalk.

Then they sent you the correct stuff. Whiting=chalk=calcium carbonate.....all the same rock.

It would seem that this would be a good time of year to start what Kutter says: set the stock up with whiting and go hunting with another gun. You've got almost the whole hunting season ahead to keep your mind off "is it done yet?"

I was a home builder in a prior life and thought about the "whiting" powder used in making painters putty and what would you know I have a big bag of calcium carbonate that I paid $2.99 for. Better yet is I can get as much as I need at the local paint store.

Many thanks for the replies