I still pull oil out of the wood using Whiting Powder.
Very slow but very effective.
The very slow part makes it not very popular for use anymore. Things have to happen quickly or at most over night it seems.
They won't with Whiting, but you can draw all of the excess oil out with patience.
..Just have other things to keep you busy in the mean time...
For that crack..
If you can carefully lift the piece enough to get glue into the crack the full lenght of the split, I'd go with that.
If not wanting to risk cracking further, I'd grind the crack open a bit further along it's interior length.
Dental burrs are great for this. Tiny m/m dia ball and cylinder shaped cutters do quick clean work and are easy to control.
Yes a Dremel is used or if you are so lucky to have a special attachment for a Foredom handpiece or such equipment to use.
Then use epoxy to repair the crack in this instance.
In the orig fix you could actually just use a WoodWorkers glue and it'd work just as well in adry, oil clean environment.
In either case I'd top off the repair with a metal 'staple' across the split in the end grain. It doesn't need to be overly large or the legs tremendously deep.
Make one from a small finishing nail bent to shape and legs clipped to length with pliers and wire cutter.
Use the Dental Burrs once again to dig out the cavity needed to seat the staple down into the wood on both sides of the repair plus bury the head below the surface slightly.
The head of the staple gets hidden just below the surface cleanly during an epoxy repair.
The forend iron will take care of the fit as well as push the repaired piece into perfect allaignment along the side of the forend metal tang.
Ser# in the wood will be untouched.
Don't forget release agent on the forend iron.
