Firearm wood finishing?

>>34949042
>new M40
m70*

The stocks aren't exactly expensive.
If that's not enough to save you from your own stupidity, strip or sand the finish off of the whole thing and pick up a bottle of linseed or tung oil and hand rub in a good finish. The wood on the rifles is fine, though blandly finished.
A few passes of a file, and a lot of sanding smooth with various grits. Expect to put in several hours to get it looking nice.
Just pay the $60 for the Warsaw pact profile NPAP stock.

>>34949105
Did you leave out the part about applying polyurethane on purpose?

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>>34949122
Yes. Polyurethane is utter shit.
Tung and Linseed oil soak into wood, then polymerize while exposed to air. They protect the wood as well as Polyurethane does, don't chip or flake off, and have a much nicer look to them. Polyurethane is unnecessary.
Stain the wood too to bring out some nice grain. It'll make it look great, trust me.
Here's a random image of some cheap shit plinker refinished with boiled linseed oil.
A quart of either BLO or Tung shouldn't cost more than $8 at Home Depot.

>>34949152
Both tung and linseed oil take like two weeks of scheduled application to make a significant different to untreated wood, and offer zero additional protection over polyurethane. In fact, they offer significantly less protection to the wood and are far less durable finishes. He'd be better of with polyurethane, epoxy resin, or shellac than fucking tung oil.

This is for a gun stock, not a guitar.

>>34949105
>The stocks aren't exactly expensive.
I'd rather try myself to do this than pick up a new stock. The worst case scenario is that I fuck up this stock and buy a new one anyway.
>>34949152
>They protect the wood as well as Polyurethane does
Unfortunately I know for a fact this isn't quite true. They're two completely different finishes with two completely different purposes.

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>>34949175
Raw linseed or tung oil, yes - those are long, tedious labors of love that'll take weeks or months
Boiled linseed oil or a commercial "Tung Oil Finish" like Formby's or Minwax are perfectly fine for applications twice a day in the morning and in the evening - three if you leave out in the summer sun.
If you go for Formby's, it even has a lacquer built into it, so by your third or fourth coat, you'll start to get an effect similar to a wipe-on poly.
>>34949186
It's not as scratch resistant, but it'll never flake, chip, or peel, and it's more resistant to swelling when wet. Beyond that, if not having your shitty fudd spray can polyurethane finish really gets your panties in such a knot, you can even spray it on over after a few weeks.

>>34949359
I think you're missing the point here. OP isn't looking to finish the whole stock, just the part he sands down in the pic. So it'll only be applied to the top. For this purpose, the polyurethane does better because not only will it protect the wood, but it'll also offer better protection against splintering while rubbing against the cheek after each shot. Not that it should replace proper sanding, but if he's only looking to use something on the top part he sands, polycrylic, polyurethane, or alkyd will be ideal. These are also 50x easier to apply for novices than oils, since they only need a couple coats tops.

>>34951821
>50x easier to apply
Maybe if you don't give a crap about a decent looking finish, though if you're at the point where you only intend to refinish the part that you hamfistedly carve off, I guess that's already the case.
Oil finishes are extremely easy to apply, they just take longer. Rub in, wipe off. I don't know why more people don't use them.

>>34951940
Because they're for tables, cabinets, and other aesthetic only jobs, and not for working wood. Oils also offer almost no scratch protection, very little water protection unless heavily applied, no substance (chemical) protection, no splitting protection, and very little splintering protection. It's mostly for low level moisture and a clean look. Which may be fine for some guns, but for an AK or any other working rifle that will likely get bumped, scratched, or wet, it's not ideal as your only coating.

Not to mention it would turn what would otherwise be like a 3 hour project into a week long project. DESU having the top sanded and refinished only won't look that bad.

Post before/after pics please OP. I want to see how to turns out!

such a small detail and an obligatory signature thing, but the tree holes make the AK look far better, much more aesthetic

>>34951977
You realize that boiled linseed oil was a military mainstay pretty much as long as wood stocks were, right? It'll hold up to trench warfare, to clubbing things to death with your stock, and decades of wasting away in a warehouse. Certainly all of those rifles saw harder use than a cabinet.
It'd still be a three hour project, by the way. Just spread out over three days to a week - the work isn't appreciably harder or longer.
Just the top will look atrocious. I own an NPAP myself, and like many other inexpensive wood stocks, it looks like the top coat of whatever they used is heavily colored to hide imperfections in the wood. You'll never get a good match color or grain-wise.