Stain and finish suggestions.

[Rt5403]

I am building a new england Fowler with a curly maple stock. I tend to like the darker finishes, I'm not talking black but a deeper brown. I don't mind if there tends to be a little red. I am clueless on the stain options. I have read a few other threads and am not much closer. If anyone has any suggestions and maybe some pictures of different stain colors it would be appreciated. Thank you for being patient with a newbie.

[Dphariss]

I am building a new england Fowler with a curly maple stock. I tend to like the darker finishes, I'm not talking black but a deeper brown. I don't mind if there tends to be a little red. I am clueless on the stain options. I have read a few other threads and am not much closer. If anyone has any suggestions and maybe some pictures of different stain colors it would be appreciated. Thank you for being patient with a newbie.

I stain Maple with Ferric Nitrate and don’t try to force things to be what they are not.
If you stain it twice with a good ferric nitrate stain and then finish it with a dark NATURAL oil it should be pretty dark. Or you could alway paint it brown. Sorry but IMO people need to appreciate the wood for what it us not try to force it there will.
If you want a walnut color you should have stocked it in walnut.
Sorry for the rant but this is one of the things I just don’t understand.

Also note that the dark colors found on many old guns is the result of oil varnishes being exposed to the fumes for coal fired furnaces and industry. Which can turn oil based finishes very dark/near black over time. Thus they look nothing like they did when new.
And remember some of the dyes/stains some people have used in the past and maybe still do, are not color fast as is Ferric Nitrate. Some of them, even some store bought “Aqua Fortis”, will muddy and obscure the figure in the wood to a greater or lessor extent. Some will continue to darken over time even turn green, etc.
This stock is 2 coats (allowing it to dry between coats) of  two different batches of shop made ferric nitrate and then a very dark shop cooked linseed oil with Rosin and Gum Benzoin added to make a varnish. I actually rubbed it back a little with rotten stone and boiled oil to lighten it a little.
You might try making a strong solution with Ferric Nitrate  crystals and test that. The crystals should allow a darker stain but I have never used it.

[Rt5403]

That's gorgeous thank you for the information.

[BrianS]

Like you, I'm looking carefully at both stain and finish options and examples are great. It seems that there are many variables, though, including the wood itself so testing is a good option. I'm testing finishes in non-gun applications and think after three options I might know what I like best. Have some scraps of my stock material for stain testing. I think the best example of testing was posted a couple of years ago by Davec2 where he used the barrel channel for stain/finish testing. I couldn't find that thread to point you too but it seems a very reasonable way to go.

[BrianS]

Found it:

https://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=57140.msg613656#msg613656

[Lone Wolf]

I've seen some great posts on here by Smart Dog about dying and staining English fowlers.  See if you can dig up some of them.  What I learned recently from his posts it that if the wood is American walnut and not true English walnut, he likes to first apply a yellow dye to remove the purplish hues.  If you are going for a dark stain, that might not be necessary. 

LMF stain is very good and I am planning to use their Walnut stain on a fowler that I am currently building.  I might end up thinning it because I don't want to go real dark, but I imagine you could get a pretty nice darker result by applying a few coats of it full strength.  LMF also make an American Walnut stain that is more brown and less reddish than what would be more typical for English walnut guns.  I've also had good results using Birchwood Casey Walnut and Rusty Walnut stains (hard to tell the difference) on modern guns, but would also consider using that on a flintlock if it was the color I wanted.