Hi all
Now I do not want to be controversial over what are good or bad gun stock finishes but the old adage of if you could ask a hundred gun stockers here in Brit land what was in the finish they use you would get a hundred different answers, but I am sure that in a lot of the answers they would be extremely economical with the truth anyway.
Now over the years I have collected a lot of so called hush hush and highly secret recipes for gun stock finishes including the infamous secretive Slakum to the trade mix it by the gallon and use a big brush to apply it.
And in a nut shell they all have roughly the same type of make up but using a large variety of ingredients to do the same thing.
So to make sense of it all I started to list the ingredients by what their part in the formula was and it started to make sense to why there are so many versions of finishes.
Though if you look back in to the past fine wood finishing was the territory of Musical Instrument makers and what substances they had to choose from was extremely limited by todays standards.
To keep things practical it is a lot easier to have a liquid to apply rather than a solid lump so we need a carrier that will either hold in suspension or dissolve what we want to apply to the wood. And what we would want to apply is either a simple basic wax or drying oil to various forms of resin though if we go down the resin route drying time starts to become an issue with some resins though not in every case, but some unknown and unsung hero found that if lead salts where added into the mix it would shorten the drying time or dry a mixture that normally would not dry of its own accord.
So what are the traditional ingredients of these usable mixtures?
Carriers
Oils Drying. Tung. Linseed. Walnut. Poppy.
Non drying. Almond. Olive.
Volatile carriers. Alcohol. Tutpentine. Oil distillates.
*Now the drying oils can be a carrier and the finish*
Resins Copal. Venice Turpentine. Canada Balsam. Pine resin.
Amber. Shellac.
Wax Bees. Carnuba.
Sicative Heavy metal salts.
Now there are some items I have left out and of course we now have synthetic versions.
So one of the many versions of Slakum I have
Boiled Linseed oil (It is not really boiled it is oil with a Sicative added)
Turpentine
Carnuba wax
Venice turpentine
Alcohol
Some versions add Antimony chloride to darken the wood also plaster of Paris to act as grain filler.
One of the trade finishes make it by the gallon sort of thing consisted of.
Alcohol
Pine resin
Finely ground glass cullet as grain filler.
The final polish was given to the stock with wax.
One of the most expensive
Walnut oil with Vandyke Brown Artist oil paint added
Amber This is prepared by roasting and it gives off extremely noxious vapours
Talcum powder as grain filler
Turpentine.
Terebene dryers
So to me they are all versions of the same story with a twist here and there.
And finally one recipe given to me by a professional member of the gun trade though it was some time ago now but if the truth be known it my be still in use.
50/50 turpentine and polyurethane varnish adding it smells ok and when you give it a final polish it looks ok to and a lot cheaper.
As for my self I use red oil on the stock for the colour then a couple of coats of Talcum powder mixed in Garnet French polish to seal the wood and fill the pores applied with a brush then cut back to the surface. Next a mixture of artists refined linseed oil and turpentine with Terebene driers as finishing oil. With that classic dull sheen given to the stock using a wax polish I did make my own but I now use a polish by Fiddes & Sons the best I have come across. I use this oil wax finish on gun stocks because it is waterproof extremely flexible scratches do not show very much and you can always re finish it by just applying a little oil with your hands and re waxing.
