You should see the book I'm compiling with all the emails back and forth to various friends about finishes. My take=there are as many takes as there are people. Some of the most "hyped" finishes I see no reason to ever use a second time. I also see the most knowlegable people I know keep trying new products, i.e. they haven't been 100% happy with one yet (and several of hte ones they have suggested I don't particularly care for).
This has been something of a progressio for me, so I'm interested in hearing from others any feedback on my experiences.
Oil finishes look nice, but my stocks always show visible water soaking in a real rain (BLO, Tung Oil). Even with urethane/oil finishes (True Oil, pro custom oil) the true "in the wood" finishes always absorb water and facial oil in my experience. For my purposes I would only use this type of finish on a fair-weather gun that wouldn't see a lot of hard use. (I live in the northeast, so I hunt in every weather from warm monsoon rain to zero degrees Kelvin).
Based on those experiences, I started building up the tung/urethane finishes a TINY bit more...it worked great, looks pretty good, but I find that with a lot of use the very thin buildup starts to look spotty much faster than I would have expected--it almost needs to be refinished after one busy hunting season or it starts to look uneven, patchy, etc. (and the dull patches still absorb water and oil like a sponge). This may be the best compromise, as it's still fairly easy to replenish the finish with this level of buildup.
After that, I figured I would try a more built-up finish but I didn't want a real gloss. I tried using 2 of the matte finishes that have a flattener in it, and built it up more than I would otherwise have. I think this could look ok, but my experience was that with the very dark-colored eastern black walnut I used in one case, any scratches in the finish from rubbing out showed up very visibly--forcing me to polish it right back up to a pretty high gloss in order to get the clarity I think the dark wood needs...it looks anything but matte, it's "shinier than the brass bedposts in a $2 whorehouse". The firswt finish (waterlox satin) dried so fast that it didn't self-level at all--I found it very difficult to work with and I ended up building it up thicker than I had intended in order to get an even finish after rubbing out. The other one I tried one of the matte finishes that has been talked about a lot recently (benmatte) and found that it's actully anything but matte--in fact it's pretty darn glossy even when hand-rubbed in--it's great to work with, but I think it's badly named and so far it doesn't really do what I had hoped.
I'll try a different matte finish (suggestions??) again on a lighter colored piece of english walnut before I give up on it, as others have told me this lighter wood won't show the fine haze of scratches from rubbing out nearly as much, but at this point I am still very much searching for the holy grail.
Please let me know when you find it.
