Why the desire and passion for light finish??

[Roger Fisher]

I assume it is simply what one likes when it comes to the visual effect of a light gun stock   I have seen some so light they could be called a peroxide blonde!
My own taste (on a gun stock is that dark colour with that mellow red undertone!  PP in the low areas and rubbed out in the wear areas.  Just seems more olde timey.   Seems to me most of the original long rifles were of such dark finish.  Am I suffering more from oldestimers or am I right that the darker finish I describe above is more warm and pleasing to the eye     Well OK, maybe mostly my eye   Seems like I have way too much time on my hands; better start scratching at my new l rifle project.   

[Acer Saccharum]

Roger, when you speak of desire and passion, I wonder what really is on your mind.

Personal preference cannot be argued.

I prefer a dark to medium stain.

Then you have tradition, where some schools used lighter stains.

That's all I have.

Tom

[eagle24]

I'm with you Roger.  I like the dark finishes, almost to the point of saying the darker the better.  However.........I saw an original Southern Rifle with a lighter (I'll call it Honey Gold) finish last year that was very striking.  I wouldn't have any idea how to achieve the finish color of that particular rifle and would almost certainly end up with something that I wouldn't like, so I'll stick to dark finishes on rifles I build.

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

I like dark, to a point.  I've seen some stocks with lots of figure and curl that were "covered up" with stain.

Honestly, I think the master at wood finishing considers the wood at hand, and applies an appropriate finish to bring out the best characteristics of the wood.

I'm slowly making all the mistakes that will eventually lead to me being a supreme master at wood finishing    For example, I took curly maple and scorched it with a torch.  This brought out the "tiger stripes" but rendered them completely two dimensional.

Having learned that curly maple should be tinted with something like iron acetate (steel wool dissolved in vinegar) I was much more pleased with the next piece of maple I finished.

Now that I learned THAT lesson I applied it to a walnut stock (modern supository gun) and stained it with steel wool and vinegar.  It turned very dark.  Almost looks ebony up close, but from a distance it simply looks like a black plastic stock!   

I have had foreign guns that were dark stained but a light rubbing of steel wool took some of the "tar" off the surface and really brought out the character of the wood.

So now, I'm finally to the point were I consider the wood FIRST then finish it accordingly and let the wood be as its Designer intended it to be.  When I have a finished product in mind and try to  make the wood look a way it isn't supposed to I botch it.

[Leatherbelly]

  I'm with you Roger, red undertones and darker finish. I have a walnut stock that's too blond for me. Another project!
 Cherry is interesting stuff. I like the Lye stain on them. Lotsa times the red is already there.

[fix]

I read once that some of the darker stains likely started out a little lighter, but darkened over time due to not completely stopping the aqua fortis. I don't remember where I read this, but if I do I'll post the source.

I am partial to medium color. Kinda like the colors Roundball posted. I do have an 1860's rifle that is very dark and I obviously wouldn't change the color of it, but the dark color isn't nearly as pleasing to look at.

Incidentally, Roundball has made me consider refinishing my T/C. The one in the picture looks amazing. I can see similar grain in the one I have, but the sprayed on finish does seem to hide it too much.

[Acer Saccharum]

I have heard the Aqua Fortis darkening over time if it is not neutralized. Varnish will oxidize and darken with age and get layers of built up oils and crud over the original finish.

[Stophel]

I thought I was the only one who actually liked natural colored wood....most people, it seems, want their wood black. 

[rich pierce]

Some originals appear quite light.  The Marshall rifle is an example.  I have yet to try a lightly stained maple stock myself.

[Acer Saccharum]

Rich, I always wondered about the Marshall rifle. It must have been cleaned at some point in its life; it's still very pristine, so it didn't get scrubbed real bad.

To get below the aqua fortis, you have to remove a lot of wood. That's one of the beauties of this kind of stain. It's more than surface. The gun can wear quite a bit before white shows.

Tom

[Mad Monk]

Some of that depends on the region with an original.

Some years back I looked at an original Hagerstown half-stock rifle that was in C.P. Wood's family from the time it had been built around 1840.  It was found still packed in a wooden crate with wood shavings the way it had been purchased from the gunsmith.  Still had the gunsmith's tin charger tucked neatly into the patchbox.  Stain colors on it were very light.  Almost yellow with brown curl.
End grain of the butt woiod under the buttplate showed an iron stain.  Either nitrate of iron or acetate of iron.  The stock had several sealer coats of orange shellac and then finished off with an oil-based varnish.

Bill K.

[Pvt. Lon Grifle]

Since it is well known that very nice curly maple appears to be the norm for American Longrifles of civilian make and use, perhaps it is so simple as "the original makers and purchasers liked a stain to show off the looks of their rifle".  Lon

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

I built this Armstrong rifle in '83 and stained it with Fiebing's leather dye.  It was a lovely dark red/brown at the time, but has faded over the years to this colour, which I don't mind one bit.

[keweenaw]

Maple is interesting to deal with in regard to stain.  If one does nothing to a nice piece of curly maple other than apply a finish, it fails to bring out the real beauty of the wood.  On the other hand if one applies a traditional stain - what you would buy at the paint store,   which is basically a vehicle with some pigmented organic or colored minerals in it , you can end up with a muddy surface that masks a lot of the character of the wood.  What the members of this forum refer to as aqua fortis is not a stain at all in the sense of the usual use of the word.  It is much closer to a heat activated dye.  The active ingredient in it is ferric nitrate.  It chemically bonds to some components of the wood and turns color when heated.  There is no pigment to obscure the surface of the wood.  The reason this brings out the figure so nicely is that the figure has different amounts of end grain and open end grain absorbs more of the ferric nitrate than flat surface grain and hence dyes darker.  If one wants to darken the color more than just ferric nitrate on maple, you can lightly wash the stock with a tannic acid solution before applying the ferric nitrate.  The tannic acid will cause the iron in the ferric nitrate to turn black.  Oak has lots of natural tannins in the wood, if you apply ferric nitrate to oak you get a nearly black surface.

On walnut I've stopped using pigmented stains to tone the wood.  I do my toning with aniline dyes to get the color I want.  This will bring out the figure better than a pigmented stain without masking anything with a surface pigment.  Grain is filled with a pigmented filler using great care to remove it from the surface.

Wallace Gusler has built a couple long rifles that have been often illustrated on which he did almost no color change to the wood.  These are exceptional rifles with superb carving and in one case a world of silver wire work.  While the wood in these rifles is of the highest quality to my taste it looks bland as nothing was done to accent the figure. To my eye light color is not the way to go on maple. 

Tom 

[SR James]

I just finished a complete re-do of a rifle I bought at a show a couple of years ago.  The original color appeared to be aqua fortis (see pic 1).  The stock was totally re-done and taken back to the white with no visible traces of the original stain.  I used two applications of aqua fortis blushed with a heat gun with the results shown below (pic 2), a totally differnt color and not nearly as much curl visible, although is does show up more in the sunlight.  The third pic shows a rifle colored using the same procedure I used on this rifle with very different results, even though the technique was the same...a different piece of wood and a different batch of AF.

I'm not sure why the big difference in color/curl between the original color and the re-do of the first rifle.

[bdixon]

Just like my truck stop coffee, the darker the better.

[Jerry V Lape]

But you failed to tell us how rifle 3 was done and it is clearly the best!

[bdixon]

Gun number three is exactly what I am interested in!!!!

[Daryl]

I was going to re-finish this very dark piece of figured maple, but feel it is fitting for the rifle.  The stain is so dark, you have to look closely at the rifle in your hands to see the figure.


I think some rifles look best with light wood, while others look just fine or perhaps better with lighter tones.




This one is quite light, but looks just fine "in person".

[SR James]

No. 1 and No. 2 are the same rifle, re-done.  I don't know how the original staining was done, but it appeared to be AF.  The second pic is the same rifle completely reworked and refinished.  It was done with two applications of AF, both blushed with a heat gun to the point just before the wood would start to go almost completely black.  It would go very quickly from the dark red background with dark curls to almost completely dark including the background.  I stopped the heating before it could go all dark.  

The third pic is a Tenn. done the same way as in the 2nd pic...two coats of AF, each blushed with a heat gun.  Two different hunks of wood, two different batches of Wakon Bay AF.

[jwh1947]

I have an original Beyer with the stock the color of honey. 

[TXEBONY]

Why do you prefer blondes or brunettes? No offense to the reheads.  It's all in the eye of the beholder.  I can say I love both depending on the subject matter.

[Stophel]

I finally came up with the "stain" that I have been searching for for so many years.  I wanted just a little bit of color to maple.  Just something beyond plain bland beige.  Aqua fortis was not going to do it, no matter what I tried with it (and OH, how I tried). 

Lye.  Lye reacts with tannic acid in the wood.  Maple has varying degrees of tannic acid, ranging from mild to none at all.  Some sugar maple gives me an absolutely glorious light golden brown color, while other pieces do nothing at all.  I imagine the shade could be regulated by the addition of tannic acid, but haven't done that yet.

If I EVER get done with this stinkin' gun I'm workin' on now (January is NOT a good time to finish a gunstock...), I'm going to start in on my "ultimate rifle" using this stock blank:




This is a lye wash, then rinsed off with water, dried and a quick coat of shellac.

[Dr. Tim-Boone]

Maple is interesting to deal with in regard to stain.  If one does nothing to a nice piece of curly maple other than apply a finish, it fails to bring out the real beauty of the wood.  On the other hand if one applies a traditional stain - what you would buy at the paint store,   which is basically a vehicle with some pigmented organic or colored minerals in it , you can end up with a muddy surface that masks a lot of the character of the wood.  What the members of this forum refer to as aqua fortis is not a stain at all in the sense of the usual use of the word.  It is much closer to a heat activated dye.  The active ingredient in it is ferric nitrate.  It chemically bonds to some components of the wood and turns color when heated.  There is no pigment to obscure the surface of the wood.  The reason this brings out the figure so nicely is that the figure has different amounts of end grain and open end grain absorbs more of the ferric nitrate than flat surface grain and hence dyes darker.  If one wants to darken the color more than just ferric nitrate on maple, you can lightly wash the stock with a tannic acid solution before applying the ferric nitrate.  The tannic acid will cause the iron in the ferric nitrate to turn black.  Oak has lots of natural tannins in the wood, if you apply ferric nitrate to oak you get a nearly black surface.

On walnut I've stopped using pigmented stains to tone the wood.  I do my toning with aniline dyes to get the color I want.  This will bring out the figure better than a pigmented stain without masking anything with a surface pigment.  Grain is filled with a pigmented filler using great care to remove it from the surface.

Wallace Gusler has built a couple long rifles that have been often illustrated on which he did almost no color change to the wood.  These are exceptional rifles with superb carving and in one case a world of silver wire work.  While the wood in these rifles is of the highest quality to my taste it looks bland as nothing was done to accent the figure. To my eye light color is not the way to go on maple. 

Tom 

Is Laurel Mountain Forge stain and aniline dye ?  Dangler's is right??  Aniline dye in alcohol?  Where do you get your aniline dyes?