Jigsaw woman

I learned whilst reading at Hot Air of the Obama campaign pushing "Julia" as a great reason to re-elect the President.  "Julia" represents all that government does for women, from cradle to grave... save that liberalizing abortion, making abortions cheap, and not putting any stigma on them means that "Julia" probably wouldn't exist because her mother saw her as a 'burden'... but lets say you are unlucky enough to be born and you are female, you would take some part in "Julia".  But not all of "Julia" because she doesn't exist, like President Obama's jigsaw woman of a girlfriend in Dreams from my Father.  Still it is telling that the portrayal of "Julia" is that of being dependent upon government for every little thing... which did prompt me to write at the HA post above, the following:

You go girl!

Go to the government to get your check!

Go rush to get AFDC when you can’t just find someone decent to live with, but can’t stop having fun, because the government is always there to help!

Go rush to the abortion clinic if you really didn’t mean to let him go that far!

Go be a wilting hot house flower taken out into the real world that forever needs protection from tyrannical government!

Government is your friend!

Government will give you things!

Government will be your master because that is what you always wanted, never to be free and always dependent on others for your life!

You go girl!

Go away.

Find some nice Communist system that will tell you how many children to have and dictate the rest of your waking life to you.

That is what you are asking for.

So go get it someplace else.

You go girl!

Or grow up and become a woman and take responsibility for your life.

Go and become a woman who can stand on her own two feet and tell the government you don’t like the bling on its manacles, no matter how free they are they are chains.

That is when you stop going and start taking a stand for yourself.

Do that and I will stand beside you for freedom, for liberty.

ajacksonian on May 3, 2012 at 1:59 PM

Women will have to start making up their minds: are they independent, free women who do not rely on tyrannical government to provide 'safety' throughout life as, in that doing, they can no longer be independent in spirit or mind, or are they a burden to society, to government and government only protects them out of pity and sweet talks them into not reproducing any more.

It isn't about gender or sex, of which there are differences between those words, but about being free to stand for yourself and, if necessary, by yourself for your own life.  Government is not Prince Charming riding in to save you, but to make you a servile peon forever begging for handouts, gifts and protection... at the cost of your own moral spirit and soon, very soon, all other freedoms as well.  You can't say, both, 'hands off my body' about abortion and then give up your body entire to government sponsored health care for, the moment you do, your choices about your body are no longer your own and if government is doing the working for you it gets a say in the outcome.

You cannot support a 'You go girl!' attitude and then, at the same time, turn around and seek more government intervention in society to 'do good'.  That is the responsibility of the 'You go girl!' girl because, by being that sort of girl, she is willing to take up being a woman with the full rights, responsibilities and perils of being a free woman able to make her own way and live life on her own terms.  Put in the broker of government and you are no longer a 'You go girl!' girl seeking to be a woman, but a child seeking to never face life, never to take part in the hard decisions in life and to accept that government must rule your life because you are unable to live without it.

This is not about the poor, the 'disadvantaged' (whatever that means), the sick (who were already being taken care of long before any government 'help' arrived), or even the mentally ill as it was the Left who led the way to close down asylums and not reform them, instead.  If you are expecting government to pick up your part, then you must face the fact that someone ELSE is paying your way and that you are not free in that doing.  That someone else isn't just the government, but the taxpayers... of which these are heading towards a minority in this Nation.  The piper is being paid by someone else and your tune is called for you and you can forget this 'follow your muse' business as your muse has been kidnapped, bound, gagged and is now held for ransom by government which will communicate what your muse wants to you.

Isn't that nice of them?

You can be a 'You go girl!' woman and expect... no DEMAND... equal treatment under the law not just for yourself but for all citizens of these United States.  That means no shelter for you, no shelter for big business, no shelter for cronies, no shelter for politicians, no shelter from life and no shelter from failure.  When you do that you are no longer a hothouse flower that must be coddled and sheltered from minor changes in temperature or humidity, but a hardy flower able to take the elements, bask in the sunlight, persevere through storms, spread her seed and appreciate the free life of liberty and the seasons of one's life.

That takes courage.

"Julia" is a coward.

I have no pity for "Julia" as she is a slave to an ideology and too cowardly to say 'Screw this, keep your money and your forms, I would prefer to starve, alone, than be the slave of government'.

The pathway being offered is clear by President Obama, and he does believe that women are, at heart, cowards.

I know better.

Women are the fastest growing segment of gun owning America today.

These women are CITIZENS of a free country willing to take up arms in self-defense against a world turning against freedom and liberty.

I salute these women, my fellow free citizens who dare to exercise all their rights responsibly like good adults should.

Those women... well... I'll see you at the range!

A quick range report

Over the holiday I got a chance to get to the range with my lady, my sister-in-law and her boyfriend, and it was packed on that Saturday morning!  We were able to snag a couple of lanes for the four of us and put some of our recent acquisitions through their paces, which was all to the good.  Of course not everything worked flawlessly as these things go...

First the Good:

My sister-in-law had picked up a Walther P22 for getting used to handguns and it had on the optional laser pointer.  I did without the pointer and used the sights and did a fairly decent job of walking up a magazine, less one, of shots an inch and half above each other in a neat line as I got used to the sights.  It is a comfortable fit for my hand and the recoil is very easy to manage.  A good pick-up for her to get used to pistols and look for a self-defense gun next.

Her boyfriend had picked up a Ruger P95 (if memory serves) which is a good and serviceable 9mm.  Accurate and relatively user friendly.

They had brought my niece's DE 50AE in Titanium Nitride which fired very well, save for the fact that someone had removed the iron sights and forgot to put on the red dot sight.  It wasn't exactly 'firing blind' but without a sight picture I did put shots all over the place on the paper.  I actually didn't notice the sound of it firing using sound dampening earmuffs, but everyone else did from what I was told.  One casing bounced off the lane partition and hit me on the nose, leaving a smudge.  It was a great gun to shoot and since I picked it up for about $1K as a gift for her two years ago, I was glad to get a chance to shoot it.  Next time sights must be on it, though.

I used that after working up through other pistols to my Para-Ordnance 14-45, old style with the Canadian made frame that I got through Buds Gun Shop.

 

This was just a familiarization session, nothing fancy, left the sights as they were.  I ran through some reloaded ammo and some Precision Cartridge Ammo, which got me reminded of the concept of 'gunsmoke'.  All of it ran through well and the only thing I noticed is that I am habitually pulling shots down and to the left of the sight picture when aiming.

I need more range time, obviously.

Still shifting my aim up and a bit to the right did help out some.

Second the bad:

I have a C&R Browning 1910/22 that I got as part of a rig and while it functions well, when it functions, it has a Failure To Feed problem starting with the top of the stack in a 9 round magazine.  I was using Prvi Partizan 32ACP FMJ going on the adage of using a European made cartridge for a European made gun.  No dice.  If it was just off the top of the stack, I could see it being just a tight bunch of cartridges, but it was also at different points in the stack of multiple magazines.  Plus there were two stove-pipes across 4 loaded magazines and each of those caused a jam for the next cartridge.  I spent time after the first magazine unloading and reloading each to see if it was a spring tension problem.  That changed nothing.

There are two things about the gun that are of interest.  First it wasn't used much before it was put into cosmoline storage in post-war France.  It was a police gun and it was stored properly and only lightly used at the time. Second one magazine had a short spring in it.  And by short, I mean just barely the length of the magazine so it was barely compressed.  That may or may not be telling.  Basically the feed ramp barely had some of the bluing worn off it so this may also be a 'less than 1,000 rounds through the pistol' break-in problem... for a C&R police gun from post-war France.  That fits, actually.

And since I have some American Eagle laying around, plus some other 32ACP, I can do a 7-round load of other ammo and see if something functions smoothly.

The target went walkabout, but I also was pulling down and to the left with the sight picture (what there is of it with this gun).

Third is the Ugly:

It actually looks pretty good on its face -

 

This is from my Vz.61 Skorpion made of new lower receiver, trigger system, safety, barrel and barrel pin, and bits and pieces off of a kit for the upper, bolt, handle, etc.

The first magazine got a jam on it, right from the top of the stack using the Am. Eagle 32ACP  FMJ ammo. Here is the cartridge in question -

I checked spent casings and they all had similar marks on them.  This one flipped up on its nose and jammed the gun.  Mind you this was just one of many cartridges, the rest fed but had similar marks on them after ejecting.

After the 10 round magazine I went to a 20 rounder, and on #19 (and I was just pulling the trigger as fast as possible at that point and the majority of those shots come from that) I got this -

Again, flipped on its nose and jammed.

The 17 shots between them went smoothly, no real complaints.

Now the contours of other cartridges may get me different results here, so the next thing to try is other 32ACP rounds.  I have some Winchester Q4255, the aforementioned Prvi Partizan, some Fiocchi, Federal Hydra-Shocks (which have problems in my Seecamp), and Speer Gold Dots (the ammo my Seecamp adores).

A gunsmith did the barrel work on this gun, so it is aligned properly from all I can see and he ran it with Prvi Partizans I gave him, so that is next up on the trial list.  Again, European made ammo for a European made (or parted together) gun.

So there you have it, lots of good guns and only two that need a bit of trial and error work on them.  For the two that had problems, the fact that they are smooth when they get a good feed means that they are probably looking at an ammo type problem rather than a massive mechanical problem.  Overall cartridge profile may mean more to cure these problems than anything done to the hardware can cure.  And since the two with the feeding problems have unused (in the case of the Vz. 61) and little used feed ramps, getting 30-50 boxes of ammo through them might just do the trick.

That's it for now!

Recent Arrivals - 2 months 3 weeks and done

When last we left the SKS stock refinishing the two spirit based coats had been done and only the final coats were left.

Looking around at various art sites and ship building sites I came across two oil semi-varnish recipes that had elements of what I was looking for in an oil varnish that was simple to make.  Beyond the oil I was looking for a bit more hardness and elasticity, both, something that instrument makers look for in the Viol family of instruments.  That said running resin in boiling oil was not on my agenda.  I wanted something that could be closer to a pre-mixed situation using solvents and what I found were a couple of recipes that hit right in this range.  One was a varnish for going over sketches which is equal parts:

Stand Oil

Turpentine

Damar Varnish (1:1 dissolved in turpentine)

Venetian Turpentine

That is a very simple recipe, and leaves you with something that takes a few days to dry.  It would have to be applied thinned and then left in a relatively dust free environment for 2-3 days minimum.  This was not exactly what I wanted but close.

At a shipbuilding site I hit on a recipe for doing (or re-doing) wood floors, and the parts ratio is as given:

10 parts Tung Oil

1 part BLO

1 part Damar Varnish (1:1)

1 part Turpentine

This is getting extremely close to what I want: a solvent varnish that is high in oil and yet offers some hardening speed for its surface.

At this point I decided that the actual factors wanted would have to include Damar Varnish (1:1) which I already had, Citrus Solvent, Venetian Turpentine and Oil of Turpentine (Rectified Turpentine).  The last gives some 'bite' to a layer for adhesion to a previous layer (if I understand my painting terms correctly), plus it is mentioned in a wide number of older recipes for other varnishes.  I still needed good drying, low tack time, and hardness with elasticity.  Thus I went with the base plus stuff mixed into it which is a great compromise as these things go.

My final mix is:

10 parts Tung Oil

1 part BLO

1 part Citrus Solvent (then 1.5 on second coat)

1 part Venetian Turpentine

1 part Oil of Turpentine

This gives a thin, light colored varnish that can be applied from a simple dropper bottle and I used 1.5 ml as the parts amount.  I would up the Citrus Solvent to see if I could cut dry times between coats.

The methodology used is a wet sanding with the varnish with 400 grit sandpaper, do thoroughly with one drop covering up to 9 square inches of stock area sanding with the grain.  Then a drop by drop hand rubbing (with latex gloves on) over the entire stock rubbing in the direction of the grain.

Let sit between 2 and 4 hours and clean excess off (it is mostly Tung Oil) and I found that it was tacky to start with but once the rag got moving it went very quickly.  Basically you want to get rid of the thick coating (I used about 30 drops total for a coat, with extra added when the sandpaper got dry or when the latex glove stuck to the stock) and leave just what had adhered immediately at the surface.

This was done twice over 2 days and it dries pretty well overnight.  If done on the plain wood this stuff nearly disappears.  I tried it on some cut boards and one drop spread around nearly vanishes.

After the next day a light going over with 0000 steel wool replacement yields the final result.  Here is the right side of the stock, no color correction applied.

I was worried about the darkness that the spirit varnish was giving to the stock and I was amazed that the entire set of tonal qualities lightened just after one application.  With two the result is wonderful.

The left side of the stock:

This really is something much, much better than I was expecting after the spirit varnish coats.  The entire set of tonal qualities has now evened out greatly from the original material.

After a day of sweating and cursing, and having to do just a bit of sanding and light filing to get off some errant finish, the actual hardware has been installed.  So I can now give the finished product:

 

If you remember this is how it looked coming in:

 

Yeah, pretty bad and soaked with cosmoline.  The entire left rear of the stock looked like something wholly different from the rest of it and with poor definition to it.  Now it blends in very well with the rest of the stock, it is a world of difference.

And the right side:

And there you have it.

I want to thank all of those making this possible: Classic Arms Inc.,Steve Kehaya and Joe Poyer for their book The SKS Carbine (CKC45g) 4th Revised and Expanded Edition published by North Cape Publications, Inc. which has been my guide to stripping this weapon, Brownell's, Murray Gunsmithing, Buy Milsurp, Apex Gun Parts, The Real Milk Paint Company, my sister and her co-worker at Moog who helped get the pin pusher made, Colman's Military Surplus, and I can't remember the name of every supply house/ art house/ and reseller of resins that I've had to go to throughout this.

I'm expecting a longer butt pad to increase LOP and a few other bits and pieces to put on, but nothing to change the original equipment.

Now it is time to take it to a gunsmith and make sure I actually put it together right and that it is safe to fire.

Recent Arrivals - 2 months 1 week 3 days

Onwards with the SKS stock finishing, and it is getting to the home stretch!

When last we left the last Tung oil coat was doing its thing and it was decision time on what to do next.

Some Dr. Science observations on the utilization of Cedar oil allowed the observation that it helps to increase contrast, decrease tonal shifts and reduces drying time of normal oils used for finishing (Tung, BLO and Walnut).  A revisit to previously used boards with Cedar oil mixtures has demonstrated that almost all of the aromatic parts of the oil have disappeared after 2 weeks.  At most a slight earthy smell has been left that comes from the oil, itself.

I haven't been that satisfied with the contrast on the forward part of the stock, but that is due to the underlying wood having grain with lots of ring artifacts that intersperse into the inter-ring area.  Bleaching with oxalic acid demonstrated that these are not introduced by outside artifacts (such as steel wool embedded in the wood from a previous finish) but are actual color and tonal qualities of the wood itself.  While it is possible to actually bleach the entire stock to get rid of those natural colorants (mostly tannic acid with some wood resins), I am generally against that for a gunstock as no arsenal would take that sort of care to do that unless it was done to every rifle going through it, and its an added step that is for a military rifle, not a hunting rifle.  That and some of the abrasions and abuse suffered while in use have been left as-is with only some sanding done to smooth over rough areas and a bit of glue mixed with wood dust to fill in a one minor surface crack and smooth over a part of the handguard.  So far the only attempt at shifting color was done on the handguard with a two layers of shellac after the initial sanding coat and first coat with Walnut oil, and on the arsenal number area of the butt part of the stock to darken that a bit via using a quick brush-on of Walnut oil over applied Tung oil.  After putting an oil coat over the shellac (Tung oil), both the handguard and stock were ready for a primary coat.

After hemming and hawing I decided on a BLO/Walnut oil/Cedar oil equal proportion mix with no solvent, just straight oil.  Using 3.5ml of each oil mixed together in a stainless steel cup using an acid brush I applied that over the handguard and stock, itself.  After 45 minutes I wiped off the excess oil, let it sit for 4 hours and then wiped it down again and let it sit overnight for drying and a final wipe-down.

Here are where things stand and the ambient lighting required the use of the flash for a number of pictures.  Way down on the list of 'things I should really make in my copious spare time' is a lightbox.  Needless to say it is not a front-burner project.

No flash on this one!

Lots of flash reflection here.

Light coming in from outside does make a difference and clouds started to darken up in the few minutes between pictures.

With that said the top picture shows a far more even set of tonal changes from the rear going to the grip area.  This is nearly matched by the upper part of the other side in the lower picture, and there is a nice set of gradations going light to dark to light over the top of the butt portion of the stock and going to dark then much darker to dark along the bottom.  It now looks like the wood on the left side of the butt stock actually is a continuation of the tonal qualities coming in from the right.

Notice that the arsenal numbers are nice and dark and in high contrast to the rest of the wood around it.  That is the Cedar oil at work with the previous Walnut oil that I only lightly rubbed over in that area.  In fact the heaviest areas of rubbing with 0000 steel wool replacement has been on the forward part of the stock with some actual 400 grit sanding up there.  It is a nearly vain attempt to deal with the wood grain as it gets so dense in color with all the darker brown and even black specks that there isn't much contrast to begin with.

Now a few other close-ups.

The left part of the butt end of the stock. Numbers are looking good and the stark tonal differences from the grip to the end of the stock are a bit more gradual.  I concentrated on rubbing steel wool replacement along the grain over that neck transition above the grip, and its having some effect.

With flash but with less glare.  On the forward part of the stock, not much can be done particularly through here.  It isn't tight grain, but the growth rings aren't well defined with some specks of bark captured throughout.  The handguard with its Walnut and shellac treatments has darkened a bit and now BLO/Walnut/Cedar have actually lightened it a bit.  Some gloss is coming from the underlying shellac, which I did rub down.  It is still much better than it was and looks like it actually came from the same tree wood, not one two counties over.

This left side has been a PITA to work with.  The flash is making it look lighter than it really is.  With that said it is seeing some effects from the Cedar oil with the grain a bit better defined.

Right side, excuse the glare.  If I have been working to darken the tonal qualities on the left part of the butt end, then on the right I have been working to lighten them and show the grain a bit better.  When it came in this was a uniformly dark, mess that might have been wood if you looked at it right, through the cosmoline.  The cosmoline hid a wealth of problems with the underlying finish, what there was of it, and trying to deal with the problems (not just cover them over) has been a pain and a joy.  The butt end of the stock is turning out to be a real pleasure to work with with relatively well defined grain.  Even with the tonal problems of the stock due to the cut angle in the wood (usually done at 7.5 degrees when cut for the arsenal) just catching the grain where it is opening up, this part has yielded the most to hard labor, sanding, and applying finish so as to help even out tone while popping out the grain visually.  Almost makes me want to go into stock making, but I don't have a lathe and I have very little chisel experience, as yet.

For all the glare, the flash does help to point out the problems with the wood grain: it is dark, has flecks interspersed in the growth areas, and that causes a darker tonal quality throughout the main portion of the stock.  Still I have assiduously worked first sandpaper and steel wool replacement to lighten this area up a bit.  It is better than the left side of the stock is for this, that's for sure, but no great shakes.  I'm starting to think the tree this came from had a pretty rough life given the condition of the growth ring areas.

And sometimes the flash is absolutely useless.

There is some nice grain in the wood here... even while still having the other problems previously mentioned.

At this point I am no longer that worried about the use of an aromatic oil as the volatiles from it leave the oil very quickly.  The entire thing needs another day to let the last application cure, however and then it is either a colorant coat to add some red into the deal (probably a spirit varnish) or just say 'the hell with it' do a light bit with steel wool replacement and put on Waterlox and be done with it.  I don't think another oil coat will get me much more than what is currently here or magically lighten the front part of the stock.  A shellac colorant layer (aka spirit varnish in one form or another) would increase gloss and then need a final finish layer unless I add something to the shellac. 

I am getting into that realm of things and whipping up my first batch of spirit varnish with platina/light button lac with colophony, sandarac and dragon's blood, plus a dollop of Venetian Turpentine, but that is to get a faux cherry look.  I might substitute garnet shellac and remove the dragon's blood, which ought to do it, but that will take time to test and experiment with. Spirit varnishes are pretty easy to work with and I need to get a supply of either anhydrous ethyl alcohol or have a family member ship in a case of Everclear for me at 190 proof.

An oil finish is very easy to apply, user friendly with Citrus Solvent, and teaches a lot about how to use it if you are willing to dabble a bit.  Every oil varnish recipe I have looked at has the words 'boiling oil' attached to them.  Fun, fun, fun!

Recent Arrivals - 2 months 1 week

After playing Dr. Science for a bit I decided that the best way to move forward with the SKS gunstock was to start the actual application of the finish.  As I want to leave my options open I decided on a basic Tung oil sanding coat and then a next sealer coat of Tung oil for the main part of the stock.  The handguard needed a bit more than that, however, as the wood it is composed of is very much lighter than that of the rest of the stock.

The procedure I used for that was to apply a basic Tung oil application (at 1:1) with solvent go through a 45 minute set and then wipe process, then another wipe down 4 hours later and then let sit overnight.  This is the wipe/wipe/cure process which will be used throughout for all oil applications.  I also did the entire gunstock with that (external and inlet areas), then sanded them down the next day with 400 grit sandpaper.  Unsatisfied with the tonal qualities of Tung oil on the handguard I then applied a Walnut oil finish to the handguard, compared it to the sanded stock and found it to still be much lighter than I wanted.

At that point I decided to fall back on my favorite of shellac and put on a 50/50 mix of 1lb cut orange/garnet shellac in two coats to the handguard and sanded between coats, let those dry to a very light amount of tackiness and then sanded down the second coat.  That did darken things up a bit and yesterday was the application of a second Tung oil over the handguard and gunstock, and did a brushing in of one loaded acid brush with Walnut oil on the left/rear portion of the butt part of the stock in the arsenal numbers area.  That went through the standard procedure and received a 0000 steel wool replacement work over along the grain and then some more 400 grit sanding in selected areas to lift some of the darkening that happens with oil layers.

This is the result:

This is the side that received only two coats of Tung oil for the stock, the handguard is as described.

On the shooter's side of the stock the rear of the gunstock is still lighter, but with somewhat more pronounced brown tones than it had previously.

The underside of the stock and I've turned the handgaurd around, as well.  There are some lightly rough spots at the left edge of the inletting near the rear screw hole that I have left rough with but minor sanding.  I didn't feel it needed any putty treatment and shows wear on the wood, as does the butt end of the stock with minor chips missing from prior use in its former life.

From the top of the stock one can see the tonal gradations front to rear a bit better on the non-shooter side of the stock.

The rubdown with steel wool replacement and light sanding to lift tonal qualities in dark areas of the stock also revealed a somewhat slick feel to the stock, meaning the oil needs a bit more curing time.  I will check it again in a couple of hours and then decide on what the final application(s) should be. 

Putting on my Dr. Science hat for a moment:

I am pleased with a separate test of 1:1:1 BLO:Walnut:Cedar as leaving a matte finish, toning down the yellows but increasing the contrast with the browns vs inter-grain areas of white wood.  Aromatic oils do help to thin down the other oils I used and decrease drying time and may actually speed the curing time by being aromatic.  Because of the aromatic nature, however, and the need for molecules to detach over time, it would not be safe to put on a finishing layer that did not allow such molecules to go through the coat.  Thus I wouldn't trust a spar varnish unless it had some proportion (at least 25%) of a Cedar oil in it if I applied the BLO/Walnut/Cedar mix to it.

Linspeed has fallen out due to the fact that it was nearly solid in the glass jar, which indicates it had sat in some exposure to air for a time and cold not be depended upon for a final finish.  It had progressed beyond oil to gel and solid, and there is no way to really reverse the chemical reaction once it has taken place.

I do have the Cabot Spar Varnish available and as it is a finish that flexes over time, may prove more suitable to a gunstock's final finish coat.  As I don't want to run a multi-month test to see how that reacts with Cedar oil or with Cedar oil mixed into it, I hold that in reserve as a possibility.

Note that if the Cedar oil does actually decrease cure time, then it will also help to cure previous applications of Tung oil via that process.  On my test board I used no solvent and the oils ran thin and fast at the 1:1:1 ratio, just as had happened in prior tests.  Adding 1 or 2 parts of Citrus Solvent would thin that even more, meaning less oil and better if thinner coverage.  For brushing purposes 1:1:1 is perfectly acceptable because of the low viscosity of both Walnut and Cedar oils.

A final way I might be able to darken the handguard is to add a tiny amount of lamp black (common soot) to the oil mix, which is a method a few violin makers have used to change the refractive index of their varnishes and help to absorb some light in some directions (due to the nature of soot it will not form a single angle alignment in a varnish or oil application) while reflecting it in others.

I have used shellac intermixed for non firearms purposes (like putting it on my router table) and have noted no problems with it.  As it forms an impermeable layer to the movement of water and other small molecules (say components of oil breaking off from the parent structure during curing) and has heat sensitivity problems, I used it sparingly on the handguard.  With that said Mosin-Nagant rifles I own have gotten far, far, far too hot to touch on the surface of their handguard pieces (I have gotten the blisters to prove that) and I know that cured shellac on wood surface is pretty tough stuff and not a wilting flower in the wood finishing department for firearms. It has not clouded or otherwise changed its clarity due to that amount of heat.  Intercoated between oil finish may be a different story and re-doing the handguard would be very much faster than doing the entire stock, that's for sure.

Shellac is very much not what is used on the SKS gunstock, but worth consideration if it can perform the necessary functions of protecting the stock as well as an oil based system.

One long, long, long term worry is that oils do react slowly with the underlying wood and while cases of wood softening are rare, they do happen.  If I  had to redo the stock I would actually aim for a shellac sanding coat of platina or platina/light button lac or blonde shellac as a base for the stock and garnet for the handguard.  After sanding could come the oil finishing which would allow the stock to have much of its wood protected by the shellac and perhaps allow a means for some lighter molecules to finish their reaction with their surroundings and not continue them.  With that said there are some really beautiful oil finished rifles from more than 130 years ago that show no wood degradation, so much depends upon the wood, the oil, the time, the environment in which the stock has been stored/used.

I am still, at this late date, undecided on the final top coat composition.

BLO is traditional and only changes color composition slowly over time. It is the oil used on SKS gunstocks when the arsenal remembers to finish them, that is... or allow the BLO to actually cure before placing them in cosmoline...

Tung oil has performed very well due to its being a bit lighter in viscosity than BLO and only does a minor hue shift to the yellow as compared to BLO.  It is not a traditional SKS oil, but looks good on beech wood more than 40 years old.

A mixture with Cedar oil promises some interesting components and may safeguard the stock against some longer-term biological attacks due to the nature of the oil.

Spar Varnishes are great for outdoor use and flex well with changes in climate, humidity and temperature so that the finish doesn't offer cracks to expose underlying work to the elements.

At this point it is a toss-up, but I can say that the stock does not look like Bubba had gotten to it.  For that I would look at some of those lovely chrome paints after basecoating with white, and then putting on a thick automotive clearcoat.... hmmmm.... shiny!

Dr. Science plays with wood finishes - Part 1

scientific method,

n a formal style of study or research in which a problem is identified, pertinent information is assembled, a hypothesis is advanced and tested empirically, and the hypothesis is accepted or rejected. [The Free Dictionary]

Well there you go!

I'm looking to figure out which is the best wood finish to put on my SKS gunstock as a first coat.

I have some requirements:

1) Must sand well. It will be sanded at either 320 grit or 400 grit sandpaper, either wet or dry with the 'wet' part being some of the same liquid used as the sanding sealer coat.  It must not clog up sandpaper.

2) Must be able to dry in one day.  I will not wait a week for it, pretty simple.

3) Must be able to take the higher temps next to the barrel and receiver in the inlet areas.  I can do a two-part finish, as I will not be sanding the inletting save to clear out any rough spots.  The temps of 180 F or more means that shellac is out unless it is part of a higher temperature varnish.  I am still researching this.

4) Must not prohibit the use of other finishes over it.  In other words, it can't have wax in it or be too acid/base to actually make it difficult to get a coat over it.

5) Visually appealing for beech wood.  Grain type, variation, and texture must show through.

6)  Nothing fancy.  No ground coat that is opaque save once the proper varnish with the right refractive index is put on to suddenly pop all the grain coloration through.  This is, in other words, an SKS gunstock, not a violin or viola.

7)  Need not match 'arsenal' look.  The arsenal botched the job.  If I wanted a gunstock with a botched-job look, I wouldn't go through all this.

8)  Not absolutely necessary, but if it can stick to easily available materials or equivalents to what an ordinary Yugoslav soldier would have while in service (meaning on-base or at any nearby town), it would be a big plus.  Nice but not necessary.

9)  Low maintenance, able to take regular use well and have some relatively easy method to fill in abrasions and scratches the finish will pick up over time.  Nice, but not necessary.

10)  Hunting scent friendly.  Nice but not necessary.

 

Notice that 'easy to get', 'cheap' and a few other choice requirements are not, necessarily, part of this.  That would be nice, yes, but I can find some hard-to-get stuff for making varnishes and such.

My initial line-up looks like this:

 

From left to right are: Tung Oil (from The Real Milk Paint Co.), Boiled Linseed Oil (aka BLO) from some big box store on the cheap, Virginia Cedar oil (from Something Cedar), Citrus Solvent (also at TRMPC), and Krud Kutter brush wash.  Not seen are four stainless steel mixing cups, cheap acid brushes bought bulk from so many places its not funny, Slip 2000 725 Cleaner-Degreaser for cleaning out the cups (from Midway USA), and KG-3 (also from Midway) for the final cleaning of the cups after a day of using them.

The first thing I want to do is find out how each of the oils work separately for application at various concentrations of oil to solvent.  Solvent is used to dilute the oil, break up the longer chains and decrease drying time.  Solvent also lowers the oil viscosity so that it is easier to apply and spreads thinner.

For each of the oils I utilized ratios so that there was an amount of oil to an amount of solvent.  This would be done at levels of Straight (no solvent), 3:1 oil to solvent, 2:1 and 1:1.  Any sanding sealer layer must go on thin, dry quickly thusly being able to be sanded readily to fill in pores or otherwise level out the wood grain.  Often a second sealing layer is used to do a final smoothing out and filling of the wood.  To test this out I applied each in the concentrations given, and allowed a two hour to dry blot time to the 2:1 and 1:1 batches and then an overnight for the Straight and 3:1 applications.

Results:

The same with the board reversed for lighting and flipped around for display to remove lighting as a factor:

And the back side for comparison:

For the board there is a top to bottom line-up of Tung, BLO and Cedar oil, and across are Straight, 3:1, 2:1 and 1:1.

Notes:

- The wood is purchased in board lengths from Home Depot.  Their supplier marks this as 'white wood' and is from Sweden.  It is inexpensive at 1x6 dimensions.  It does not have any odor of pine to it.  It is relatively high density and relatively easily worked along the grain in a router.  It chips when routed across the end grain.  Now you know as much as I do about it.

- Tung oil goes on smoothly, loses viscosity evenly so that each addition of solvent makes it flow faster, and it pops out the grain of the wood, visually.

- BLO rapidly goes from a thick oil to one so watery that it is hard to contain at 2:1 and 1:1 concentrations.  It puts a yellow cast to the wood and does not pop out wood grain, although it did not have as much to work with as the Tung oil.

- Cedar oil is relatively low viscosity compared to the other two oils to start with, comparable to 2:1 concentrations of BLO or 1:1 of Tung oil.  While solvent increases volume it only substantially lowers viscosity at 2:1 and 1:1 where careful application is necessary to keep it in the test areas.  Even at Straight it tended to flow to the left of the board.  It has an earthy aromatic quality of cedar that is not as biting as western cedars.  Cedar oil does some popping of the grain, but due to low viscosity it is unknown if the BLO just above it was mixing with the cedar oil.

- Comparatively BLO flows faster with additional solvent as compared to Tung oil and introduces a moderately more yellow cast to the wood.

- Cedar oil has an initially high pop factor for the grain, visually, but that goes down as it dries.

- At 3:1 concentrations BLO was gelling up overnight and came off in a spotty fashion.  This was not the case with the Straight application.

- All are well suited for a 2:1 or 1:1 concentration with 2 hour blot time.

- Tung oil was amenable to an overnight blot down for the Straight and 3:1 concentrations.

- Cedar oil was dry along non-border regions with BLO at Straight and 3:1, and blottable at the margin area.

 

Conclusions

The reported ease of use of BLO reported anecdotally is one that is indicated by this simple test: at 2:1 and 1: concentrations with a citrus turpene, BLO flows very easily.

Tung oil is comparable to BLO at 2:1 and 1:1 concentrations and superior at 3:1.  At straight it is similar to BLO.

BLO at 3:1 concentrations is a tricky business as it can, apparently, be wiped down before a longer over-night sitting.  As it starts to thick-dry, it is hard to work with, taking some of the blot material which then needs to be rubbed off, and that takes off the gelling BLO.  A 3 hour blot time would, apparently, be safe with BLO at 3:1 concentrations.

Cedar oil leaves no yellow cast to it on the wood, and is superior to both BLO and Tung oil for leaving as much of the wood color coming through it at all concentrations.  As an aromatic oil it dries quickly, save at Straight concentrations overnight where some was left in non-border regions with BLO, but those cleaned up easily with a dry blot disposable wipe.  Compared to Tung oil and BLO the finish left by cedar oil is relatively thin, indicating that it would need a post-sanding coat if used as a sanding coat.

The surprisingly rapid miscibility of cedar oil and BLO needs to be investigated.

Next it will be mixed with both, and with solvent, and all sections given a 2 hour blot time as the aromatic nature of cedar oil indicates it speeds drying time.

Another oil will also be tested in this on its own board both straight and with cedar oil and solvent.  It is not a regular modern gunstock finishing oil.

Recent Arrivals - A Week Onwards

Now last we left the intrepid cosmoline cleaner he had finished with the hardware of the Mosin-Nagant 91/30 and was working on clearing the stuff from the stock.  Ahhh... such heady times! 

Now after repeated applications of antique restorer with a process of wipe-on, wait 5 minutes, wipe-off, go and do something else for a day so that you wipe down the next day before re-application... and this stuff will continue to leech out cosmoline for a month afterwards... it is now time for the final wipe down and re-assembly.

A beauty to behold!

The benefit of doing this slow route is that if you have an area dedicated towards gun cleaning you can go through this slow process and continue on with other projects.  Makes me wish I had an area dedicated to gun cleaning...

The wood actually is pretty dark, but I should probably do a color balance there to get something a bit closer to what it actually looks like.  Since I don't have P-shop on the machine I use for the majority of my posts, this will have to do.

That is much closer to what things are coming out like!

Sorry for the low-light effects for the pictures, but I also don't have a dedicated platform for taking pictures.  The wood I'm using for contrast is whatever the anonymous 1x4x8' stuff is at the local Home Despot.  They don't say and I would only guess oak, given the grain spacing and knots that show up, but that is probably wrong.

The finish is not grainy, as indicated by my poor picture taking, but smooth.  And not 'cosmoline on finish' smooth, but clean smooth like shellac on wood.  That is the finish on Mosin-Nagants, btw, garnet shellac (or a relative) at a pretty hefty cut.  I use some 1 lb. cut that I mix up in small batches for touch-up work and it re-melts the old stuff and allows for a somewhat cleaner appearance where the finish has chipped or worn off.

Basically this rifle is finished and just needs a final check-out before firing.  The chamber looks great, the rifling is sharp and the bore shines.  There are times when I begin to suspect these rifles were never fired, but that isn't indicated by the carbon deposits on the stock.  Still this one is in better overall finish shape than my prior ones, although the stock appears a bit more dented in the buttstock area from original use: minor dent irregularities were smoothed out, sanded and finished over from the arsenal.  Either that or it was just poorly cut in the first place and they decided to smooth over the imperfections...

Now for box 2!

Yes, that other box behind the first one on day one.

This is not another M-N (although I do like the batch this one came from) but something different.  Spooky, huh?

Time to pull up some pictures I took on the first day.

In comparison the M-N was just coated with cosmoline.  This baby is packed with it.

Yup a Yugoslav SKS 59/66 with grenade launcher/compensator and bayonet!  Unlike the USSR which must have been scrimping and saving on cosmoline, the Yugoslavs decided that for every SKS they must make sure a quart of cosmoline goes into it.

All that glistens is not gold... most of it is probably cosmoline.  There is no real concept of 'bare metal' the way this thing was refurbed at the arsenal.

If you are unwise enough to touch that with your bare hand, you will be putting that hand into a degreasing solution.  This is no thin coating of cosmoline, like with the M-N, but congealed masses of the stuff in every crevice of the rifle.

All I can say is every place you see a dull gleam... you wouldn't want to touch it with your bare hand.  Plus some smart fellow along the way may have wrapped this rifle in paper for a few microseconds as there are flakes of paper embedded in the cosmoline on the surface.  They are just so infused with the stuff you can't really see them.

I wore gloves getting this baby out for display.

It got put back in the box while I got a nice book on the SKS rifle that would go through its lineage and have a detailed strip described in it because this rifle will have to go down to component parts.

Now a week later, with those materials in hand, I started out with the idea that I really do need to touch this thing with something other than gloved hands so started work on a few of the top parts to get things ready for stripping down.

Sorry for the brightness of the paper towel there.

This is a treated/untreated photo of the handguard over forearm, where the handguard has been treated with antique restorer and the handguard has not.  While there are some tonal differences in the wood, the top now allows for the flash to shine off of the finish (done with BLO from what I understand) while the cosmoline is just... everywhere on the bottom.

Words do not describe it, really.

The effect is less pronounced on metal, but the very top of the grenade launcher and gas tube have been given a quick once-over and the bottom barrel and bayonet have not.  Still it is possible to recognize that there is, finally, clean metal showing up top!
I dare you to do that with any other solvent that smells like a forest has invaded your sinuses!  Just not going to happen.

Here the rear portion of the buttstock has been cleaned with a once-over and the part in front past the grip area has not.

Yesterday was the day to really begin work and the very first thing that is in the procedure is to get the cleaning kit from the buttstock...

Uh-oh.

Yesterday, after re-assembling the M-N, I had my first job on the SKS.

Clean the cleaning kit.

And I thought the butt plate on the M-N was bad!

Little did I know.

I put all the small parts into my handy-dandy ultrasonic cleaner with weapon cleaning solution, and gave them a 3 minute cycle.  A couple of the smaller parts, like screws, could be taken out at that point. The rest got a repeat of that and, yes, the milky substance I found from the M-N is, indeed, cosmoline that has been cavitated with bubbles as that happened to the globules of the stuff on the parts here.

While that went on I began to apply antique blemish remover to the rest of the stock hoping that it will fight its way through the cosmoline.  The wipe-on was... well... sticky and awful.  The after 5 minute wipe-off wasn't much better.  Today the overnight wait is done and I will be getting on with actually starting the thorough take-down and strip of everything from everything else.  I couldn't see through the bore... well, I could see the lovely soft glow of light attempting to get through cosmoline...

Buy your milsurp Yugoslav SKS and get a FREE quart of cosmoline!

YMMV.