New Member - Walnut Questions

[Pukka Bundook]

Welcome to the Forum, Mr PHolder!
Hope you enjoy it here.

Richard.

[Dphariss]

Comments. WALNUT.
Fillers are a waste of time. With a HEAVY BODIED soft oil varnish or even just reheated acid killed  “boiled” linseed oil I can fill most American Walnut in 3 days in summer when I have good sunlight. Then put on a top coat of linseed oil varnish and then either rub it back with rottenstone and varnish or leave it depend on how it looks.

Stains often do more harm that good unless the person INSISTS on a certain color. Then of course there is paint.

Synthetic finishes, varathane, permalyn, etc should be avoided like the plague. They almost always look like plastic.
Friend who used to work for a VERY skilled gunmaker said “they look like the grain was painted on”.
Having stripped a couple of modern rifles with a thick, one REALLY thick, plastic finishes I can assure you that a so-so piece of wood under plastic turns out much more attractive with a natural oil finish. And a don’t use Tung Oil. Some if not most tung oil products you find are largely solvent and linseed oil with a little Tung Oil to make it “legal” to call it tung oil.
Waterproof.  A finish that is hard enough to be waterproof will invariably check. I can remember hunters (I guided hunters a few seasons years ago) bringing Remington (Dupont plastic finish) into a cabin and as they warmed you could HEAR the finish checking with little “pings” and such. It was laughable. But they looked nice and shiny, though not very “lively” in the store where they were bought.
A finish on a coffee table is different than on a firearm. Firearms finishes must be ELASTIC. “Flexible” is NOT the same thing. Anything you buy that has a low natural oil content is designed for indoor use on furniture and such.
Linseed oil. The “boiled” stuff you buy at the lumber yard or hardware store is pretty useless as a stock finish. First off its not heated in the vast majority of cases. They just wadd driers and sell it. Raw LS oil never really dries. Anyone who has an unmodified  WW-II M1 who puts a piece or diaper flannel in the oiler holes in the stock knows this. And it never really gets shiny, which is good when hunting heavily armed “people” in some jungle.
Store bought “boiled” Linseed Oil is just a BASE for a good stock finish. Oh it will work but it dries VERY slow and will cloud if exposed to much liquid water, rain or snow, where it is gripped by the hand anyway. AND its often not darke enough in color. So don’t use something meant to be painted on a fence or barn as stock finish. It will protect the wood but its a PITA as a stock finish for the most part. I have written of making store bought oil into a stock finish a few times and the last batch I used Eric Kettenburg’s formula with a slight tweek of my own. I really like this. And its traditional. AND its invariably faster than using a “finish” that is 80-90% solvent and thus only a small amount of solids. I have filled American walnut with heavy bodied reheated LS oil with no resins in two days with summer sun. Not going to go into the how. Just seal with a light bodied varnish cut with some aged turpentine the day before. Then heavy coats of the heavy oil, rubbed back with Burlap or 0000 steel wool when it gets gummy. NOT dry. Experiment. I seldom use more than a soak coat and shine coat of the resin bearing oil on Maple.
Wear. Stock finishes wear. The British used to have guns reoiled after every hunting season. Finally Don King, a friend and mentor used (IIRC) Sherwin-Williams “Beauty Lok”  or maybe Lock. It has stood up very well on a DK Hawken I have used quite a lot. I suspect that it had a natural oil as the “finish” ingredient. But don’t know and do not know if its still being made. But Don, like myself was not into built up finishes. Which show wear more than “in the wood” finishes do.

This is a better photo of the “English” gun and better shows the colors a little.  Would be better in the sun but is in the 20s and cloudy. And what I get on my computer is somewhat subdued once on the website and I am sure this is true of most if not all photos posted here. And IIRC since its European Walnut its only got maybe 3 coats. Its been used and has a dull spot or two.

[Dennis Glazener]

   
Comments. WALNUT.
Fillers are a waste of time. With a HEAVY BODIED soft oil varnish or even just reheated acid killed  “boiled” linseed oil I can fill most American Walnut in 3 days in summer when I have good sunlight. Then put on a top coat of linseed oil varnish and then either rub it back with rottenstone and varnish or leave it depend on how it looks.

We all have different tastes, I happen to think using a black filler on walnut with no stain gives a great looking finish. Really brings out the beauty of walnut.
Dennis

[Clowdis]

Brownells makes a filler called "French Red" which is an oil with a bit of rottenstone I think, and alkanet root in it. It makes a great filler for walnut and imparts a slight red tint to the wood. If you're going to build a stock in walnut it really needs the pores filled regardless of which filler you use. It brings the quality level of the stock up tremendously.

[Dphariss]

   
Comments. WALNUT.
Fillers are a waste of time. With a HEAVY BODIED soft oil varnish or even just reheated acid killed  “boiled” linseed oil I can fill most American Walnut in 3 days in summer when I have good sunlight. Then put on a top coat of linseed oil varnish and then either rub it back with rottenstone and varnish or leave it depend on how it looks.

We all have different tastes, I happen to think using a black filler on walnut with no stain gives a great looking finish. Really brings out the beauty of walnut.
Dennis

You are certainly correct here.
First let me say I don’t have a ML in the place stocked in American Walnut.
However, the use of modern “clear” or very light colored finishes will not darken the pores assuming it even fills them. Here are a pair of brass suppository guns. One is about 30 years since its had anything done to it other than shooting and cleaning. The receiver is not even hardened. I have always planned to have it engraved since it has a serial number that is important to me, company/Bn/ Regiment from back when I got paid to hunt communists. Looking at it I should renew the finish a little.
The other is my modern hunting rifle. It comes in handy sometimes. Even more so before they fixed my right eye.  It had plastic on it when i got it, its got a very dull finish now and I did not even bother to put enough on to fill it. It just has to be water resistant and I don’t want it shiny.  Both have fairly dark fill in the pores. But the one has little and other needs some more put on it. But I built the rifle in the early 1990s after I left Shiloh.
 




I try to stay traditional. I cannot imagine a longrifle maker back in the day using a filler, they didn’t need it for one thing, and I have never seen a late 19 th C suppository gun that I thought was “filled” other than with finish. Nor can I even imagine a in 1770-1890 putting on 6 or 10 or 20 coats of finish. Though by 1890 more “modern” finishes had appeared.  Now at one time at C. Sharps I was wet sanding about 2 stocks a week to fill them using a modern “tung oil” varnish with a lot of solvents. You go nose blind to the stink pretty quick, unfortunately. This is a HUGE PITA and far more work than its worth.  At Shiloh I transitioned  over to “home made” boiled Linseed oil and over time have come up with better “home made” finishes. They are far less work and they look like an oil/oil varnish finished rifle would back in the day. Since its likely that the old gunsmiths made their own varnish. Seems like J.P. Beck’s estate had a “paint pot” which would have been used to make oil paint or (I am sure) stock finish.
We also have to remember that the very dark finishes or remains of finishes found on many old rifles are NOT what they looked like new. In the East especially the massive use of coal in industry and home heating put chemicals in the air that will react with LS oil finishes to darken or even blacken them.
The “brown varnish” I make is very dark but its not dark on the stock unless a very thick built up finish is done and even then it will not look like that on the “Bridger Hawken”. While it likely spent most of its time in the West, coal was used out here too.
People should use what they like or want. I do.
Dan

[AZshot]

To the OP, my thoughts are:
1. Bear in mind MOST American guns for the past 200 or so years have used Walnut.  The long rifles up North used maple but everything else has been walnut, with a few outliers like cherry and chestnut.  But Walnut is a beautiful perfect wood for gun stocks.  Always has been, from 1800 to 1995 anyway.  If you're trying to make it look "more like curly maple" it's a fools errand.  Maple is stained darker to try to look more like walnut.

2. Walnut is dark.  It seldom needs a stain.  It can have a lot of figure, if you buy AAA grade or better.  Or it can be straight grained like the Harpers Ferry 1803 rifles.  Again, trying to get a piece that is so curly it looks like maple is difficult, it usually won't be. 

3. Almost all the original Southern Mountain rifles, or Appalachian School that I've handled and own are walnut.  Just like almost all have iron trigger guards.  To me, if you are making a SMR, it needs to be walnut.

[Daryl]

Interesting observations, AZshot - tks.

[PHolder]

Thank you all for your input.  I believe the less than attractive walnut guns I've seen were probably finished with a synthetic finish. From what I've gleaned from this walnut doesn't need stain and should be finished with an oil based finish.

I still haven't made up my mind which wood.  Walnut and base maple are at the top of the list as they are more common in the originals. I still get drawn towards cherry from time to time. I have a cherry cradle i made about 30 years ago, only finished with ting oil.  It has aged nicely.

Until I place my order my mind will probably change. I have a tendency to fear making a wrong decision where they is no wrong choice.

[Daryl]

Claro walnut is nice sometimes. No stain, just True Oil.

[Dphariss]

To the OP, my thoughts are:
1. Bear in mind MOST American guns for the past 150 years have used Walnut.  The long rifles up North used maple but everything else has been walnut, with a few outliers like cherry and chestnut.  But Walnut is a beautiful perfect wood for gun stocks.  Always has been, from 1800 to 1995 anyway.  If you're trying to make it look "more like curly maple" it's a fools errand.  Maple is stained darker to try to look more like walnut.

2. Walnut is dark.  It seldom needs a stain.  It can have a lot of figure, if you buy AAA grade or better.  Or it can be straight grained like the Harpers Ferry 1803 rifles.  Again, trying to get a piece that is so curly it looks like maple is difficult, it usually won't be. 

3. Almost all the original Southern Mountain rifles, or Appalachian School that I've handled and own are walnut.  Just like almost all have iron trigger guards.  To me, if you are making a SMR, it needs to be walnut.

I need to do some devils advocate work here. But this is a “what I want or like thing mostly since there is no real rule”.  150 years ago puts in the age of the factory mades. Heavily into the machine made factory guns  In 1872 we were well into Winchester (by the end of 1872 they had made just under 110000 1866s if we go to later models like the 1873 its truly staggering by the 1890s and they made 5 other lever action rifle models alone  prior to  1894), Colt, Sharps (made something like 150000 percussion rifles and carbines from 1853 to 1865), Ballard etc ect. For our purposes here  150 years is meaningless.  The militaries liked walnut since all the stocks looked pretty much the same. Uniformity. Get the stock ready to finish. Coat it with oil/varnish and it was pretty well done. And it looked like every other one in the rack. Most specifically would not use or accept figured wood.

If there is a reason why  Southern guns were stocked in Black Walnut it would be simple availability. Plus, generally good maple does not grow in the South or the West coast.  Hard maple is far superior to American Walnut as a stock wood. In fact almost every other species of Walnut is superior to American Walnut. Sugar Maple is harder, denser, stronger and far easier to finish, unless its grown in a mild climate. I stocked a couple of guns in some very nice curly hybrid Walnut known as Bastogne, its a hybrid of Claro and English. THIS I liked. English is really nice too. So I see American walnut as acceptable stock wood its certainly the most desirable for several reasons. UNLESS you are mass producing 10000 or 40000 rifles a year. This said. Softer Maple varieties and those from milder climates generally really suck. Yes,  I have used some of this too when I worked for C Sharps arms. I suspect it was Silver Maple. It was like curly pine. The three early Hawken rifles I have been able to look at closely are 1/2 stocked in Walnut. But remember that a great deal of Walnut in the past 150 years has come out of Missouri. I would guess that around 1/2 of Hawken Mountain Rifles were walnut. But this may have changed as the wrist breakage thing was addressed. But this is supposition and would take research to show one way or another.  Sugar maple in the NE was also used for sugar and was valuable for that. Especially as more and more forest was turned to agriculture.

This is from wood-database.com
Black Walnut  38 pounds per cubic foot. Janka hardness 1010
Claro.            40. “           “     “        “     “          “         1130
English          40                                                          1220
Bastogne       46                                                          1250
Hard Maple    44                                                          1450
Red Maple     38                                                            950

White ash is very similar in these numbers to hard maple.

There are other things listed that I did not bother to type in. And I don’t think “hardness” is a true measure of strength. But I don’t have the expertise or time to decipher everything listed for the various woods.
Finally traditionally stained maple does not look like Walnut. I might add that the maple stocked Bridger Hawken does not appear to have ever been stained. Just painted with “brown varnish”. 
And finally the ML rifles we see are all survivors of the WW-I and WW-II scrap drives.

[Jim Kibler]

For production work, walnut is definitely less labor intensive and easier as compared to good maple.  It machines and cuts pretty nice and takes less force for hand work.

Jim

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

I got to love working with walnut when I worked for Don Robinson here in Prince George in the late 70's, making Hawken rifles for him.  He imported his walnut from Oregon and California:  claro, english and bastone.  We didn't use any American Black Walnut.  We used DemBart's Stock and Chequer oil from Brownell's for finish, and made an attempt to fill the pores by sanding the oil with the wood.  English was my favourite to work with, for it's consistent firmness, colour and workablility.  Here's an example of the work I did for Robinson back then, a personal rifle for myself with variant Dimick style guard and nice stick of Claro walnut.

[AZshot]

I need to do some devils advocate work here. But this is a “what I want or like thing mostly since there is no real rule”.  150 years ago puts in the age of the factory mades. Heavily into the machine made factory guns  In 1872 we were well into Winchester (by the end of 1872 they had made just under 110000 1866s if we go to later models like the 1873 its truly staggering by the 1890s and they made 5 other lever action rifle models alone  prior to  1894), Colt, Sharps (made something like 150000 percussion rifles and carbines from 1853 to 1865), Ballard etc ect. For our purposes here  150 years is meaningless.  The militaries liked walnut since all the stocks looked pretty much the same. Uniformity. Get the stock ready to finish. Coat it with oil/varnish and it was pretty well done. And it looked like every other one in the rack. Most specifically would not use or accept figured wood.

If there is a reason why  Southern guns were stocked in Black Walnut it would be simple availability. Plus, generally good maple does not grow in the South or the West coast.  Hard maple is far superior to American Walnut as a stock wood. In fact almost every other species of Walnut is superior to American Walnut. Sugar Maple is harder, denser, stronger and far easier to finish, unless its grown in a mild climate. I stocked a couple of guns in some very nice curly hybrid Walnut known as Bastogne, its a hybrid of Claro and English. THIS I liked. English is really nice too. So I see American walnut as acceptable stock wood its certainly the most desirable for several reasons. UNLESS you are mass producing 10000 or 40000 rifles a year. This said. Softer Maple varieties and those from milder climates generally really suck. Yes,  I have used some of this too when I worked for C Sharps arms. I suspect it was Silver Maple. It was like curly pine. The three early Hawken rifles I have been able to look at closely are 1/2 stocked in Walnut. But remember that a great deal of Walnut in the past 150 years has come out of Missouri. I would guess that around 1/2 of Hawken Mountain Rifles were walnut. But this may have changed as the wrist breakage thing was addressed. But this is supposition and would take research to show one way or another.  Sugar maple in the NE was also used for sugar and was valuable for that. Especially as more and more forest was turned to agriculture.

This is from wood-database.com
Black Walnut  38 pounds per cubic foot. Janka hardness 1010
Claro.            40. “           “     “        “     “          “         1130
English          40                                                          1220
Bastogne       46                                                          1250
Hard Maple    44                                                          1450
Red Maple     38                                                            950

White ash is very similar in these numbers to hard maple.

There are other things listed that I did not bother to type in. And I don’t think “hardness” is a true measure of strength. But I don’t have the expertise or time to decipher everything listed for the various woods.
Finally traditionally stained maple does not look like Walnut. I might add that the maple stocked Bridger Hawken does not appear to have ever been stained. Just painted with “brown varnish”. 
And finally the ML rifles we see are all survivors of the WW-I and WW-II scrap drives.

And I'll play counter devil's advocate. 

I didn't do my math right. 1800 to 2022 is 222 years, not 150.  Let's clarify my point this way: Most guns made in the 19th and 20th century in America had walnut stocks.  Not just Sharps, but civil war Springfields, Spiller and Burr revolver stocks, all the way back to Lewis and Clark's flintlocks made by the armory.  If you remove the long rifles 99% of all other rifles were walnut. Why did Pennsylvania and Virginia and Kentucky mostly use maple on long rifles, while the US Army was using walnut?  I don't know.  But I doubt it was the military wanted softer wood.  I'd say local abundance may have been a part of it.  I agree the Sugar Maple range peters out in the southern Appalachians, so they used walnut there for long rifles too.

My point was walnut makes a beautiful, traditional (in the south) rifle stock from any era.  In long rifles only do you see maple as a common stock...up north.  In the rest of the regions and eras and types of rifles, walnut has always predominated.  Sure, an M-14 from Vietnam sometimes had birch.  But 9 of 10 were walnut.  I think a similar ratio was in the south for mountain-made long rifles.  It's an interesting question as to why. 

If the scrap drives were gathering rifles in the South, they'd grab maple Piedmont rifles as well as walnut Appalachian rifles.  It wouldn't skew the statistics - most Appalachian rifles (even documented before WWII) seem to be walnut. 

All I know is today people are staining maple darkly.  I've never seen an unstained maple stock, but it would look like an unstained maple guitar - white.  I doubt that was useful on the frontier. 

Hardness may have played a role.  I've not seen any tests on "bend strength" or whatever mechanical stresses cause wood to break.  But we've seen both maple and walnut stocks broken at the wrist. Sometime a hard item breaks easier, like glass compared to...well..wood.  "Rock hard" maple always sounded a little risky to me.

So again, my point was to the OP.  That if he want's tradition for a SMR, go with walnut.