doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com What will finish the job?

A while ago I had picked up a pretty nice 1889 Remington hammer gun. There were some dark water stains on the butt and I used some wood bleach (having oxalic acid) to remove the stains. I brushed it on the stains let it sit a bit then rinsed with clean water. I've done this 5 times, most of the stains have disapeared. It doesn't seem to be removing any more of the stains. Should I keep going with wood bleach or is there something else that would get the last of the stains out?

Thanks,

Jack K

Sometimes stains are permanent and more than on the surface. More bleach, used judiciously, might help, might not. Probably won't hurt anything. Sooner or later a guy has to call it good and move on to the next step.

The purists will be aghast, but you might be able to mask some of the remaining stains /streaks with a bit of pigmented oil brushed in carefully as the first finishing step. Don't use water or alcohol stain, because they are generally dye stains. You want a pigmented stain, meaning one that leaves a sludge in the bottom of the can after it sits a while. The water stains in your stock will generally follow the grain lines in the wood, so you could use a striping brush (sword brush a used for automotive pin striping) to carefully color the streaks and blend them into the rest of the wood. If you screw this up, it will be hard to correct, so be very careful. Start with a stain that is lighter than you think you need. You can always go darker but it's hard to lighten things up once the pigment is in the wood.

Mark Larson should probably comment on this one.

Since this is the type of work one learns by doing (and by screwing up and making mistakes) maybe Jack should just consider having Mark correct it for him so that it's right the first time. I'm a great one for doing it myself, but sometimes it's a good idea to pay for someone elses experience.
Steve

Craigster and Steve,
I think you are right for my situation. A little more bleach then evaluate it to see if I can live what the stock looks like or contact Mark Larson and discuss options.

Replacement,
Thanks for your ideas and help. Your solution will be put into service on another much darker colored stock I'm working on and it's in a smaller area. The Remington stock is very light in color, almost like those blond Browning stocks from the 60's.

Thanks to all,

Jack K