Thanks folks for looking,
Tim, I learned some tricks from Kit Ravenshear a long time ago. I used black walnut because I had a pretty good blank on hand and getting English walnut blanks long enough for a musket is very expensive and often they are just not available. This is also a mostly "pro bono" job. I try to build at least one gun a year for a deserving reenactor who cannot afford a good custom made musket or rifle for their kit. The photos below show the stock before stain and finish.
Here is a scrap from the stock with finish applied compared with the stained stock. You can see it is typical cold, purplish brown of black walnut. This one was a little light in color.
I start by staining the stock with water-based aniline dyes during the whiskering process. In this case, I started with a dilute black stain, let it dry and whisker the stock, and then scraped and sanded it off completely except for the dye imbedded in the pores of the wood. This highlights the grain and gives an old mellow look to the eventual appearance. Because the wood had faint streaks of magenta, I enhanced that by mopping on a scarlet stain and then scraping it off during whiskering. I needed one more cycle of grain raising and I stained the stock pure yellow and scraped it off. Finally, I added another coat of pure yellow aniline dye dissolved in water but did not scrape or sand it off before adding finish. The finish is Sutherland-Welles polymerized tung oil. I may add one more coat to increase the gloss a little to better match the originals. Contrary to what some folks believe, these muskets were not finished with a dull "in the wood" oil finish. It was a slightly glossy oil varnish.
dave
