doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DIY Gunsmithing @ doublegunshop.com After effects of acetone bath on wood

Interesting thread!

Three days in acetone and then three days in denatured alcohol which appeared to come out clean. A week was necessary for the wood to shrink back to normal size so the water was absorbed. I never used alcohol again. I never noticed weakening of the wood after the acetone and I am still shooting some of those guns ten years later and they still look great.

I'm confused by your post, builder. Are you saying the alcohol was necessary to re-introduce moisture into the wood, or that you tried it using the alcohol bath once but never again?

My issue is that the wood has always shrunk too much, when using acetone alone, and the metal is proud of the wood. This is a big issue. For it to look right the action would have to be annealed so that it could be filed down to the level of the shrunken wood. Much work that needs to be avoided at all costs. Some way to reintroduce moisture into the wood, other than letting it sit for a year in high humidity is necessary.

SRH

Sorry for the confusion Stan. I was making two points.

First, the alcohol did not really remove anything that the acetone had not already done.

Second, I believe the denatured alcohol introduced a lot of water into the stock and it took a week to shrink back to normal.

I have not experienced shrinking of the wood due to the acetone. Maybe I was just lucky but I have done a couple of dozen with no shrinkage.

We had a similar discussion several months ago in the main forum. From everything I have learned about the effects of organic solvents like acetone on the structure of wood, I am still of the opinion that long soaks of heavily oiled stocks in these solvents should be minimized.

The conundrum is that doing nothing about oil soaked wood also continues to degrade the structure, so something must be done. But much of the oil and crud can be removed by heat, absorbent materials such as whiting, tissue paper, or kitty litter. I then proceed to things like washing with Murphy's Oil Soap, or a solution of household ammonia which saponifies mineral and skin oils. The saponified oils become water soluble. Of course, these must be thoroughly rinsed off of the wood and dried. Dawn dish detergent is another great oil remover. This assumes that the old finish has already been stripped for anything beyond surface cleaning. I then proceed to using isopropyl or methyl-ethyl alcohol soaks if more oil removal is needed, and only use acetone or lacquer thinner soaking as a last resort for the most heavily oiled wood. But doing it this way takes time and doesn't give instant gratification. And if you think your acetone soak is removing every last bit of oil that has soaked into the wood for the last 75 years or so, just put your clean stock aside for a few months before refinishing to see how more oil discoloration migrates back to the surface.

Wood is mostly composed of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin. Google "lignin soluble in acetone" to see if you think prolonged soaks in acetone are healthy for your gun stocks. Of course, even alcohols can dissolve lignin with prolonged soaks. Water and alkalies can dissolve cellulose, as is done in paper making processes. Does this mean that a few days soaking in acetone will dissolve your stock? No, of course not. But more cellular damage will be done to the very thin sections of L.C. Smith inletting, for example, than to a 1 1/2" thick butt section. Short soaks in solvents are probably better than leaving old gun oil in your wood, but prolonged soaks in harsh organic solvents are best minimized or avoided whenever possible.

Stan's wood shrinkage was probably due to the acetone carrying out much of the higher moisture content that would be found in a humid climate such as Georgia. Restoring that moisture will swell the wood near normal dimensions. But long soaks in organic solvents are likely removing other things besides water and old gun oil. The fact that your stock doesn't break after cleaning and refinishing does not mean it is as strong as it was initially. The guys who are flooding their wood with thinned epoxy or crazy glue after solvent soaking have probably learned that they need to do something to strengthen wood that has been weakened by oil rot and solvent soaking. Every stock needs to be evaluated on an individual basis and treated according to condition and stability of the wood.

One of the rare times mixing alcohol with shotguns is recommended. Gil

I'm gonna give it a try, and buy a bottle of the cheap stuff this afternoon, just to see the face of the clerk when I tell him what I want it for. I can hear him muttering to himself as I walk out, "I've heard some lame excuses for buying liquor, but that's got to be the worst".

SRH

Be prepared Sunday morning Stan. Word travels fast in Church circles. They'll be lying in wait for your 'intervention'...Geo

SRH

I do hope my suggestion of Vodka has not started some sort of wayward behaviour from our American cousins!!!!
Just a food for thought post. I am sure that I have mentioned this before sometime in the past but I am still of the mind it is the finest method for removing oil from a gun stock, but not the cheapest initially but does have a lot going for it after its initial set up. With the only ongoing cost is a roll of Toilet tissue per stock.
Before I retired I was doing some work in a factory making ultra high voltage transformers, the final operation for each transformer was to impregnate all the windings with an Epoxy insulator and moisture barrier this was initially a liquid but set solid after an hour. This was achieved by putting the transformer and liquid epoxy in a small vacuum chamber then applying a vacuum, this caused the air trapped in the windings to be removed and could be seen producing bubbles on the surface of the surrounding liquid Epoxy. After 10 minutes the vacuum was slowly reduced and in doing so the liquid was drawn into the transformer windings.
My next visit home I put a gunstock with an oil saturated head in my suitcase for vacuum chamber experimentation, here I must say it was only a one time experiment. I left the stock on a hot radiator over night, next morning I wrapped the stock in a complete roll of toilet tissue to soak up the oil. Placed the stock in the vacuum tank and lowered the pressure slowly to minus 3 Bar keeping it there for 12 hours, then slowly bring it up to atmosphere. The results where surprising the toilet tissue was saturated with oil from the head and chequering, and just to make sure I did it all over again only this time very little oil came out in fact I would say minimal. I have always had in mind for an entrepreneurial person could do something with this on your side of the pond, we don't have the numbers of guns with oil soaked stocks here to make the expense of having this equipment worth wile.