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Author Topic: Aquafortis over dye?  (Read 2491 times)

Offline Roger B

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Aquafortis over dye?
« on: October 05, 2016, 07:22:59 PM »
Now that I have my Hawken shooting straight, I'm going to strip the stock and restain it.   I originally used Feibing's British tan leather dye after I saw the beautiful color it gave a friend's maple war clubs, but it stained my maple stock a nice, bright, red.  I sanded and restained with Feibing's medium brown and it looked pretty nice for a while, but soon the red bled right through.   So now I'm thinking of trying aquafortis to see if I can kill the red.  So what do you guys think?  Anyone have experience trying something like this? 
Roger B.
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Offline T*O*F

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Re: Aquafortis over dye?
« Reply #1 on: October 05, 2016, 09:05:37 PM »
Once you get the finish off, soak a rag with denatured alcohol and start rubbing a section of the stock.  It should pull the Feibings out of the wood and into the rag.  You won't get it all out, but it should lighten it considerably.
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54ball

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Re: Aquafortis over dye?
« Reply #2 on: October 05, 2016, 11:35:10 PM »
 Recently I was involved in re doing a Track Vincent at the shop. An inexperienced hand had built it so we did our best. The finish as brought to us looked muddy and dead.

 We used scrapers to scrape away all the old finish. 100 percent of the oil, varnish or what ever was the top coat has to be completely removed. The wood was still tinted somewhat but it was bare wood. It has to be bare wood for the AQ to take.

 The rifle finished beautifully. We used Kiblers oil finish hand rubbed over a couple of weeks in spare shop time.

 One thing....The rifle finished very dark. Indoors it looks black. In the sun, it's chocolate and the stripes "pop".

 For a lighter finish you may want to remove as much stain as possible but that may mean ...going deep.  Also, less heat on the AQ but if the wood is tinted it will tend to finish darker than normal.

 Good luck.
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Offline Hungry Horse

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Re: Aquafortis over dye?
« Reply #3 on: October 06, 2016, 01:27:07 AM »
IMO, Feibing's leather dye is a poor product for leather, and even a poorer stain for gun stocks. It sun fades, and is bad to come out blotchy, or streaky, on leather. I much prefer Lincoln's which is much more colorfast, and has a lot more pigment, and not so much carrier, in it.
 Auquafortis or similar acid stains, is more labor intensive, but really is the best there is for maple. Once you learn how to control, and manipulate it, you can start getting the most value out of a piece of curly maple.

  Hungry Horse
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