Refinishing The Furniture

You question has two answers.

If you are trying to preserve and conserve your stock and retain its vintage patina then Bruce's instruction will work well.

If you are not concerned about preserving the vintage patina but wish to clean the stock well enough to reproduce it's original finish without damaging any markings then you could use a product like Murphy's Oil Soap. It will penetrate the wood more and remove soaked in stains. It's a phosphate free, vegetable oil based cleaner with surfactants that will penetrate well. It will remove the original patina and return the wood to a lighter color. You may not want to use it on a collectible stock. Use the same procedure as Bruce described but use the Oil Soap instead of mineral spirits. Afterward wipe down with raw linseed oil. Here are before and after examples.

Before:



After Cleaning:



After Applying RLO

I like the Murphy's Soap Oil results! 

Last month I purchased a original USGI stock & hand guards for my M1 Garand.  I want to give it a good cleaning.

Thanks Wayne.  Makes sense based on what I have read.

To the original question … 'Who has a procedure for cleaning and refurbishing dirty (and I do mean dirty) furniture...like this?'

I am brand new to this forum and late to this thread! I have a great deal of interest in this topic as I have a several carbines that with stocks I want to rehab and/or restore. These are stocks that appear previous owners could not resist the temptation to add a glossy, or otherwise topcoat with a ‘surface’ finish.

First I like to say I’m pretty handy at wood working projects, but I’m just a beginner in antique stock restoration. I am interested in learning about the original carbine finish and being able to restore a stock close to that condition.

Over the past month I’ve been doing a fair amount of research, but with so many sources, what did I get right ? What did I get wrong? You can judge the result of my first experiences here.

Here are two references that I followed and used as general guides. You are probably all aware of these !

1.) I found this CMP article on Wood Cleaning and followed the recommended approach of not using water-based cleaning/stripping (see section 6.1 in the CMP article) because as I wanted to protect the quality of my sharp (and faint) cartouche/markings from any swelling or raised grain. I decided to follow their guidance of using Minwax Antique Furniture Refinisher to remove the existing finish.

http://thecmp.org/training-tech/armorers-corner/wood-cleaning-article/

2.) I found this Garand Gear article that gave me a better understanding on the different penetrating oils and it looks like a good general guide for finishing. I didn’t use the Garand Gear guidance to ‘stripping’ as it involved water.

http://www.garandgear.com/m1-garand-new-oil-finish

First, I used the Tung Oil only approach that Bruce outlined above (I had found it in section 9 of the CMP article) on one gun that looked to have a dirty, but otherwise I think original finish, and I agree that this worked well. I focused on taking down only the dirtiest areas to preserve as much of the original look as possible. The Tung oil dissolved built up gunk, and then I would move to a clean area of the cloth to apply more oil. I repeated this over the whole stock, rubbing in the oil with a light hand and wiping to make sure the finish was even. The oil definitely penetrated instead of staying on the surface. The end result was a uniform, flat finish. The original coloring was unchanged.

Note that I used a product from Wood River called 100% Natural, Unprocessed Tung Oil.

Next, I tackled QHW M1 that had a fairly clean, but sadly mixed finish. It looked like someone started to put on a glossy poly or varnish finish. I knew I would be removing finish on this one so I spent a fair amount rereading the CMP and other articles I could find on what results I would get with the Minwax Furniture Refinisher.

It turns out Home Depot, at least in my area, stopped carrying Minwax and I could not find this product anywhere. It was recommended that Formsby had the same thing called Furniture Refinisher and this is what I used.

Different from other strippers I’ve used, you don’t apply it, wait and scrape it off. You apply it with a pad or steel wool, rub gently, rinse with more of the refinisher and repeat. It dissolves varnishes and shellac, and conditions the wood. Whatever condition means.

This product is not able to remove Poly, so I decided to test it out on one spot of the QHW stock and see what happened. In about 10 seconds I was stunned and immediately pleased with the result. See the first picture. The gloss finish just dissolved away. I followed the Formsby instructions and completed the entire stock. It was easy to use, cleaned effectively, and with a uniform result. The wood was smooth. It was at 220 or a bit more.

I also spent a fair amount of time debating on what to use as a finish: Raw Linseed Oil vs. Boiled Linseed Oil vs. Pure Tung Oil. I understand that in original carbine manufacture the stocks were dipped into Raw Linseed Oil and hung to cure. I don’t think I’ve seen an originally preserved gun, but I expect that new the finish would be mostly flat and rougher wood than the condition of our well-handled, old girls of today.

If anyone is interested I’ll post the RLO, BLO, and PTO links, but in summary this is what I learned.

Raw Linseed Oil (RLO) takes an extremely long time to cure: weeks, or even months. It is not a wood preservative. It has no UV light protection and it provides no resistance to fungus, mildew or water damage. Over time and handling RLO will develop more or the red patina seen on our original carbine stocks. This was the original/correct carbine finish.

Boiled Linseed Oil (BLO) is RLO with additives to speed curing and possibly add protective qualities. It’s called boiled because it’s heated to integrate the additives and the oil ‘roils’ ? during the process. Then I saw a completely different reason why it’s called boiled ! It has gone through a vacuum cooking process at very high temperatures, which increases its viscosity and shortens its drying time. What’s right ?

Pure Tung Oil (PTO) is another penetrating oil that comes from a tree in China the produces the Tung fruit. It is also slow to cure, but in a fraction of time as RLO.   It has qualities that are advantageous over Linseed oil, including providing a much better level of water and mildew resistance. However, it will not develop the same level of red patina over time as Linseed oil.

What to use? I decided to get a new walnut board and do a test.

Frankly I could not find Raw Linseed oil anywhere in my area. So I compared BLO to PTO. You’ll see my test board in the pictures below. They were soooo close in properties. Color was only slightly different. BLO was a tad lighter and on the yellow side. PTO was a tad darker and brown.

There was such a little difference in the test, I decided to use the PTO on the QHW stock because of its advantage in water/mildew resistance properties. Maybe I should’ve chose the RLO because this gun is pampered.

The PTO was very easy to apply. I put a thin coat on part of the stock with a foam brush, waited 5 minutes, and wiped it off. When I was done with the whole stock I wiped it down with an old t-shirt. Then I hung it from the butt plate screw for 24 hours. I applied 5 coats. The first 3 were cut 50-50 with mineral spirits. The last 2 were 100% Tung oil.

Pictures of the end result are below. I’m super pleased with the outcome. Obviously, I’m just learning. Before I commit on my next stock I’m going to get some RLO and do a 3 way test.

What do you think ?

I've been applying the first 3 or 4 coats mixed 50/50 with mineral spirits and a final coat at full strength, and haven't run into this situation yet. The end result is a very low sheen - yes, to me looks on the dry side.

If your stock is just 'slightly' tacky you may just want to wait it out, but from what I've read it could take a really a long time for the sticky to go away - or it may never go away.

Being the impatient sort, I'd probably try rubbing down a small area with mineral spirits and 3-0 steel wool. If that didn't work, I'd move up to Minwax or Formby's Furniture Refinisher (my new favorite product).

Also found this conversation on the topic.

http://forums.thecmp.org/archive/index.php/t-109730.html

I enjoy reading and getting educated regarding all the approaches to care and refinishing the furniture. I am a Carbine novice and fortunately have had to only do light cleaning and reRLOing of my two Carbines. I am so glad some prior owners did not Bubba them up by splashing them with shellac, urethane or some other hard coating. Mine were just dirty and sticky. I've used a mix of RLO and mineral spirits that works well, but then so has a light wipe with denatured alcohol. I do mean a very light wipe with cotton cloth. That seems to remove the gunk but leave the patina that I want to preserve. I admire those that have completely refinished their furniture and restored them. Some examples I have seen look fine. Given the condition of my two, a careful cleaning has accomplished the mission.

I want to thank all those that have contributed their projects and the results. A special hat tip to Time2Reload for the detailed report with photos.