Finishing Cherry

[LilysDad]

For firearms with cherry stocks made in the 18th-early 19th century, was any effort made to darken the wood before finishing? Or was it simply left for time and the sunlight to do the job?

[45-110]

The last stock I did, I sprayed cheap lye oven cleaner on it. It turned the wood from bland to a rich lovely tone. I would do it again as it worked so well. Neutralize it with ammonia.
kw

[GANGGREEN]

I've only done one rifle in cherry and turned a nice, dark color in very short order without any treatment other than Tru-oil.   I gave a stock blank of curly cherry to a friend and he made a fowler out of it, then stained it with Minwax natural and hit it with multiple coats of Tung oil and now after several years, it really hasn't darkened much at all.  I can only guess that the Minwax stain may have neutralized it or something so that it's more stable.   I actually like that lighter/pinkish color better personally.  I have a piece of the same curly cherry at Dave Keck's having a fowler barrel inlet into it and my intention is to treat it the same way, although I know that doesn't answer your question.   

People say that the Easy-Off or lye treatment works very well, but in my experience it isn't necessary unless you want it really, really dark.

[smart dog]

Hi,
It is unclear to me if they stained cherry.  However, because it is a light wood they may have used lye or some other stain.  In Espingarda Perfeyta, which was published in 1717, the authors criticize the use of cherry for stocks because it required staining so staining cherry was obviously a practice.  If you have questions about how to color cherry, use the search function above for "finishing cherry".  That has been discussed  many, many, times.

dave

[fahnenschmied]

Somewhere Ive encountered bringing the color out of cherry by using water with pickling like in it - so I did that on a buttstock I made for a Zimmerstutzen,as I couldnt find a big enough chunk of european walnut to do the job.

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

To neutralize the lye solution you'll need a weak acid, as lye is a base.  So flush it with vinegar, rather than ammonia.

[smart dog]

Hi Folks,
I don't think Lilysdad is asking how to stain cherry but rather if gun stockers stained it in the 18th and 19th centuries.

dave

[rich pierce]

I doubt we can know whether they stained cherry in the 18th and 19th centuries. We could reason about it - they stained maple after all - but I doubt we could find good evidence. On maple stocks one can see a difference between the barrel channel and the exterior of the stock. Of course exposure to sunlight etc and oxidation of varnish have effects as well.

I recall my parents had a late 1800s cherry rocking chair that was quite reddish and obviously stained. We have a nice drop leaf cherry table from the same period that has no reddish tones. So, treatments may have varied even in a given timeframe.

[LilysDad]

Thanks! Yes, as Smart Dog said, I was asking about the old timers. I am aware of using lye. However, seeing as the original gunmakers were making a living, I wonder if they took the time to use multiple different stains, acids, tints and finishes.

[Robin Henderson]

I used cheap Dollar General Store oven cleaner on this little rifle. Pretty simple to spray on, wipe off and neutralize....easy peasy.

[Mad Monk]

The cherry wood darkened with age.  I had some cherry wood on a shelf over the kitty litter pan out back.  The ammonia fumes from the litter did a god job on the cherry.  It turned it a nice red brown color.  Chuck Dixon used to talk about the cherry or maple schimmels stored in the barn for quick use in the field and the ammonia fumes found in barns with horses and cattle.  I set up a bag I could hang the rifle stock in and placed a pan with household ammonia under it.  Back in the late 1800s the furniture factories would set up the finished furniture in a room with a fan and a an of ammonia.  This is how they made Oak turn the Golden Oak color.  They used cherry and other woods in the furniture.  Those also changed color with the ammonia fumes.  Then they would do the finishing work on the pieces.  The fumes worked better than swabbing any ammonia onto the wood.  The ammonia reacts with the tannic acid in the wood.

[WKevinD]

This is cherry with lye neutralized with ammonia and one coat of true oil.
Kevin

[Gordy]

I have used baking soda on cherry. 2 tablespoons of baking soda to a cup of warm water, just use a soft bristle brush to apply. The wood in the picture i applied truoil for the finish.
Good Day, Gordy

[borderdogs]

Cherry is one of those woods I love to work with. I have only built furniture with it in particular a cabinet and  few small tables. Over many years the color of one of the tables has darkened and has a rich deep color which is lovely to look at. Its been probably close to 30 years since I built that table and if I recall I used a danish oil finish on it.

I have been interested in trying cherry for a gun stock but one of the things that keeps me from committing to it is how to finish it. I feel the same way about using walnut. What about leaving it natural, say with a boiled linseed oil finish and letting it darken on its on? Would gun builders have done that on cherry stocks in the 18th and 19th centuries?
Rob

[Stonehouse john]

LilysDad,

 I'm a cabinetmaker and have done a fair amount of restoration on early cherry furniture.  I don't know specifically what 18th &19th century gunsmiths were doing but in understanding the finishing techniques and practices of cabinetmakers of that era there are a few interesting factors to consider.   Linseed oil was already a very commonly used finish by the 1700's and they well understood that the raw product made for a soft and very slow-drying finish.  In that era, "boiled linseed oil" was made by boiling the raw oil with lead oxide which made it dry both faster and harder.  As you say, these guys were making a living and needed to get their products finished and out the door, so "boiled" linseed oil made sense for cabinetmakers (and likely for gunsmiths as well).  What they may not have understood is that the added lead oxide, like lye products, is alkaline, and has the same effect on cherry (though more slowly at a lower concentration than our finish of oven cleaner, baking soda, etc).  So your question about them using multiple-component finishes may be that they inadvertently added them all in one convenient step by using their version of slightly-alkaline boiled linseed oil. 

Also, different woods respond very differently to natural oxidation, as you say "time and sunlight".  If you plane-smooth two boards, one of cherry and one of walnut, over a long span of "time and sunlight" the cherry will continue to get darker in color and the walnut will continue to get lighter (assuming no one's oiling or continuously handling them, oiling will darken them both).  I've experimented with 2 chunks of the same unfinished cherry board, one kept in total darkness and one in direct summer sunlight and just the sunlight darkens it a great deal in as little as a day or two.

My guess (FWIW) is that cherry gun stocks were much lighter in color the day they left the maker than what we see today but also that they darkened very quickly with use.  No way to know for sure but that's my take on it.

John

PS.  Robin, That cherry stock looks great!     

[GANGGREEN]

Great information Stonehouse john.

[LilysDad]

Interesting info concerning the lead oxide! Does modern BLO still have those characteristics?

[Stonehouse john]

Does modern BLO still have those characteristics?

I don't believe that it does. 

The BLO you can buy now shouldn't contain lead oxide because it's so poisonous ( I pity all the folks who used BLO to treat their cutting boards, rolling pins, wooden spoons etc over the years).  Raw linseed oil is roughly pH neutral and the "heavy metal dryers" they now add (cobalt/manganese) do not seem to noticably change the pH. 

Modern BLO is still a pretty good choice for surfaces that see a moderate amount of wear and tear though (like a gun stock that's used but not abused) because it penetrates the wood surface when it's applied and then polymerizes within the surface-fibers of the wood.  This adds a bit of resiliency to the wood surface against minor dents and dings.  The surface sheen that BLO produces on wood is somewhat easily scratched but is also one of the easiest finishes to renew by simply re-oiling with more BLO (then wiping back off to prevent building an over-thick finish).  And it's a historically appropriate choice if that's something you're going for. 

So if you want to add some "quick age" to a cherry surface with modern BLO you'd do well to treat the wood with your alkaline-of-choice first as has been discussed above.

John

[Stophel]

Massachusetts rifle.  Ca. 1820s








It doesn't have the appearance of having been sanded down and refinished, but it may have been.  Lots of end grain showing on the butt, which would have soaked up a lot of stain, had there been any, and that would not sand out easily (if at all).  The end grain is clear.  There is some kind of varnish on the surface... or rather, just below the surface.  It's mostly worn off.  But you can see a few spots where the surface has been scuffed, finish gone, and the wood is much darker there from soaking in oil and grunge.

[Rawhide Rick]

I used cheap Dollar General Store oven cleaner on this little rifle. Pretty simple to spray on, wipe off and neutralize....easy peasy.

That is a beautiful gun.

[Mad Monk]

LilysDad,

 I'm a cabinetmaker and have done a fair amount of restoration on early cherry furniture.  I don't know specifically what 18th &19th century gunsmiths were doing but in understanding the finishing techniques and practices of cabinetmakers of that era there are a few interesting factors to consider.   Linseed oil was already a very commonly used finish by the 1700's and they well understood that the raw product made for a soft and very slow-drying finish.  In that era, "boiled linseed oil" was made by boiling the raw oil with lead oxide which made it dry both faster and harder.  As you say, these guys were making a living and needed to get their products finished and out the door, so "boiled" linseed oil made sense for cabinetmakers (and likely for gunsmiths as well).  What they may not have understood is that the added lead oxide, like lye products, is alkaline, and has the same effect on cherry (though more slowly at a lower concentration than our finish of oven cleaner, baking soda, etc).  So your question about them using multiple-component finishes may be that they inadvertently added them all in one convenient step by using their version of slightly-alkaline boiled linseed oil. 

Also, different woods respond very differently to natural oxidation, as you say "time and sunlight".  If you plane-smooth two boards, one of cherry and one of walnut, over a long span of "time and sunlight" the cherry will continue to get darker in color and the walnut will continue to get lighter (assuming no one's oiling or continuously handling them, oiling will darken them both).  I've experimented with 2 chunks of the same unfinished cherry board, one kept in total darkness and one in direct summer sunlight and just the sunlight darkens it a great deal in as little as a day or two.

My guess (FWIW) is that cherry gun stocks were much lighter in color the day they left the maker than what we see today but also that they darkened very quickly with use.  No way to know for sure but that's my take on it.

John

PS.  Robin, That cherry stock looks great!     

John,
I had a cabinet maker contact me some years back.  He specialized in refinishing furniture from the 16 and 17 hundreds.  He was working on a reproduction of JFK's desk in the oval office that dating back a lot of years.  He saw what he thought was the classic lead dryer metal boiled linseed oil.  The finished had started to blacken with age on the original.  So he wanted to try and duplicate the finish.  I explain how sulfur gases in the buildings got into the oil finish and combined with the spent lead dryer metal particles in the boiled oil finish or boiled oil based varnish. When the boiled oil had original dried the lead dryer metal was kicked out of solution in the oil.  So you had the finish full of minute lead oxide particles.  They would pick up the sulfur gases and turn black.  Lead sulfide.  I showed him how to duplicate that finish darkening with powderd bone char.   Then talking with Chuck Dixon we talked about how many of the so-called Schimmel rifles were stored in barns ready for use wild animals that would attack the farm animals.  A lot of ammonia in those old barns.  That ammonia would change the color of a stock wood with the ammonia reacting with the tannic acid in the wood.  So the original guns were treated to a lot of different vapors in the air that would effect a stock wood's color.  I would point out that ammonia is fairly caustic and easily passes through a finish ad into the wood and penetrating very deeply into the wood.

Bill K.

[Stonehouse john]

That JFK desk sounds like a really cool project to be involved in!  And a perfect illustration of how the antique woodwork (or gunstocks) we see today have been affected by their whole lifetime before they got to us. 
Bone-char was a great solution to matching that finish.  I've never tried that before but I'm gonna store that idea away in the ol' memory banks!  A classic cabinetmaker's trick to get that age-blackened finish on cherry is with asphaltum (dilute tar) and it does a really good job, but you've got to wipe it off while still wet or it can leave some sticky streaks.

You're right about the ammonia.  The signature look that made Gustav Stickley famous (and probably the only cabinetmaker well known enough that most people would recognize his name) was his "fumed oak" furniture.  The "fumes" that make that finish are just amonia.  Nice look because it darkens the wood without hiding the grain at all.  When done on purpose it's done in a tent full of ammonia-fumes but a barn full of animal-pee-fumes would sure do the same thing.  I've mucked enough horse stalls at this point in my life that i suspect it's probably changed my patina some too!  The ammonia is only really effective on tannin-rich woods (cherry is one), oaks show the biggest effect, and mahogany will work too.
Interesting stuff.

- John

[Nbogan]

Here is my cherry rifle. It is a Kibler SMR i built in June. I used Tried and True oil finish and let it age naturally. In my opinion naturally aged cherry is about the prettiest wood you can get. I've build several furniture pieces out of cherry and have never stained one of them. The only draw back is pieces built at different times will never really match in color because of the time difference between when they were built.

[Mad Monk]

Does modern BLO still have those characteristics?

I don't believe that it does. 

The BLO you can buy now shouldn't contain lead oxide because it's so poisonous ( I pity all the folks who used BLO to treat their cutting boards, rolling pins, wooden spoons etc over the years).  Raw linseed oil is roughly pH neutral and the "heavy metal dryers" they now add (cobalt/manganese) do not seem to noticably change the pH. 

Modern BLO is still a pretty good choice for surfaces that see a moderate amount of wear and tear though (like a gun stock that's used but not abused) because it penetrates the wood surface when it's applied and then polymerizes within the surface-fibers of the wood.  This adds a bit of resiliency to the wood surface against minor dents and dings.  The surface sheen that BLO produces on wood is somewhat easily scratched but is also one of the easiest finishes to renew by simply re-oiling with more BLO (then wiping back off to prevent building an over-thick finish).  And it's a historically appropriate choice if that's something you're going for. 

So if you want to add some "quick age" to a cherry surface with modern BLO you'd do well to treat the wood with your alkaline-of-choice first as has been discussed above.

John

John,

The old boiled oil was not really loaded with lead.  Most contained 0.5% metal weight to oil weight.  It was only when you got into the pigment boiled oils use on wood work indoors.  That usually contained a lot more of tribasic lead carbonate as a colorant or as a simple filler.   You would have to chew on a lot of boiled oil stock finish before you suffered any problems from the lead.  In dry oil film you will not pick up any lead from the boiled oil wood finish.

A lot out there on the dangers of lead poising is utter BS.  In house paints the formulation may have included the lead carbonate but the other heavy metals in the paint were equally or more dangerous.  Some of the pigments were based on cadmium.  Then they had other heavy metal combinations to prevent fungus forming on the paint.  The thing with this is when you inject a multiple of heavy metals the effect on the human endocrine system is far out of proportion to the actual weight of the metals you took in.  With more than one heavy metal their is a multiplyer effect on the human body.

Beyond a doubt is the biggest scam regarding lead shot and lead bullets out in the wilds.  For over 100 years the fruit orchards used a lead arsenate compound to protect the fruit from insect attack.  They would spray the orchard trees and then the rain would wash a good bit of it into the ground.  Then you had animals that ate the grass growing in the orchards.  The grass had picked up that insecticide.  Then they concentrated it in their bodies.  Animal that ate other animals would then concentrate the insecticide in their bodies.  When the so-called scientists looked at this animals they only tested for lead.  Not arsenic. And the digestive systems of the wildlife extracted a lot more arsenic that lead from the grass and some other plants.  Than you had the carrion feeders that ate dead animals and the condors concentrated even more of the insecticide they got out of the carrion they ate.

I went through this with a local environmental group fighting a local lead acid battery plant with a lot of heavy metals coming out their smelter stack.  They had some children's doctor out of Philadelphia speaking on the lead levels from the battery plant and what was in the soil around the plant.  I left him dig a big hole and then I hit him with the subject of inhalling or ingesting a multiple of heavy metals and the resulting synergestic effect.  He was floored.  He had never looked at that and concentrated only on lead.  After the meeting he pulled me aside and wanted to know where I got my information.  I told him.  Any industrial pollution hand book went into it in great detail.  Then I told him what my job was in the big chemical plant.  He thanked me and took off.

Basically the amount of lead in a lead boiled linseed oil is so little so would have to eat several hundred pounds of it.

Now if you want lead poisoning try shooting smokeless powder handguns out of a winter shoot shed. The smokeless cartridges are using a lead based primer compound that blows out of the gun when it ejects a spent casing.  Shooting that way and you would be surprised how fast you show lead in a medical test.  And the percussion caps we use have a lead based primer composition so just sticking the muzzle out the shooting window or port kicks some lead fumes into where you are sitting to shoot.