Contemporary rifle project

DAK4442

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Due to circumstances this has been on my bench way too long. It's my 7th build and I've been winging it without much of a plan as I've been going along. Just taking some porch time rubbing down the 4th coat of tung oil. A hand full of pieces to engrave and it should be done? Thanks for looking. Critiques welcome...Dan
 

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don hicks

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Mar 16, 2011
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Wow! Beautiful piece of wood you chose there, really enhanced by the carving and engraving. Maybe you should turn one of the butt stock screws a little left or right so there would be something we can critique. Fabulous work anyone would be proud to own. Thanks for posting
Cheers
Don
 

DAK4442

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Thanks Don. I'm guessing that's a little OCD poking through? For some reason I always orient every screw head to be parallel with the stock. A screw head turned perpendicular would just seem to me to be bad form...hahaha. Star heads would probably drive me nutz?
 

monk

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no critique needed here. a real handsomme piece. did you do any light torching to get the effeft on your stock ? i asked, as i once did a lot of engraving for a gent that made front stuffers. he used a few brass templates occasionally to do torch treatments to his stocks. mostly when he used hard maple that he wanted to fancy up a bit.
btw- how long do you wait between applications of the tungoil?
 
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Omar Haltam

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That is a beautiful piece of wood and workmanship, and I can see a lot of time and work went into the build. Good Job
 

DAK4442

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Bedford, PA
Monk, thank you for the compliments. No I've never tried using a torch. An interesting idea but I'd be to afraid of scorching the wood. This particular stock is all natural figure. I was lucky enough to run into a seller who had some nice maple stored in a shed for quite a few years. I now have 8 blanks in my garage rafters that happen to have more figure than this piece. Three of them are so tightly and consistently figured that they won't ever be for sale. I'll probably use them for pieces for my three children. I only stain with aqua fortis. One coat then use a heat gun on the stock until the piece turns chestnut brown. At that point the figure is only lightly visible. I immediately rub in a liberal amount of boiled linseed oil by hand and rub down the stock with 0000 steel wool fairly hard until the figure begins to appear. Then immediately rub in a second coat of oil and another rub down to bring out more contrast. Then I leave the piece for 24 hours. After that time, rub down # 3 which dulls the finish but brings out more contrast in the figure. In areas that are still dark I add a little more pressure with the steel whoop until figure starts to appear then I stop. No more linseed at this point but another 12 hours to dry. After the 12 hours a thin coat of tung oil and dry 12-24 hours until it's dry to the touch. If it's tacky Leave it. A rub down with steel wool then rub down with an athletic sock to remove any steel dust or sticky residue in any groves then light coat of tung oil. 12-24 hours dry time then repeat. Every coat and subsiquent rub brings out more contrast. When it gets to the look I like I rub it down and add a couple coats of paste wax. Coats of tung oil are very thin and become tacky and almost dry as I'm rubbing. When I rub with steel wool I rub most all the oil finish off to a dull finish. Might take me a week or so to get a stock finished. In short the tung oil needs to be "dry" not tacky/gummy before rubbing. So depending on your weather 12-24 hours or more?
 

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