Stock refinishing: Waterlox, Tru-Oil, or Watco?

I plan on refinishing a couple old beat up rifle stocks over the winter. I definitely want a hand rubbed oil finish with a satin to semi-gloss sheen.
I'm leaning towards Waterlox but would love to know what others have used or suggest.

I use Tru-Oil or Permalyn. Just finishing up a stock with Tru-Oil on a Kimber Of Oregon 223 that had an accident. After the pores are filled I wet sand with 600 then hand rub the finish until it's not tacky, usually takes 3-4 coats after sanding. Gives it a nice Satin or semi-gloss finish.


Attachment 83567Attachment 83568

i've had good luck with tru-oil but it is pretty shiny if done right. can be toned down a bit but remains pretty glossy unless you sand the bejeebsus out of it. it is a nice protective hard shell.
ren-wax works nice for a matte finish but does not provide much protection.

Thats a beautiful piece of wood and finish

Just use a straight up oil finish such as tung oil or boiled linseed oil.

I've had good luck with Rocky Mountain Luster but that was on an already finished stock. It really brought out the walnut grain.

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Originally Posted by Bad Dog

Thats a beautiful piece of wood and finish

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Yeah KoO really put some nice wood on their rifles. I have a couple KoO Super Americas that are even nicer. The stock pictured was almost broken in two pieces. After researching how much a replacement would cost ($1000 and would need to be inlet to the action), I decided to try fixing it. I'm pretty happy with the results so far and considering it's for a 223 I think the repair will be strong enough.

I'm probably late to this party, but when i re-finish gunstocks I generally strip most of the old finish with 60-80 grit (carefully) using an orbital palm sander, then hand sand with like 220, then clean with compressed air and a tack cloth, then a coat of Watco Danish oil finish. Let dry for an hour or two (depends on temperature) then buff with steel wool- 000 I think. then compressed air and tack cloth again, another coat of Watco, light steel wool, air and tack cloth, let dry overnight. Finish with a coat or two of Carnuba wax, looks great!

With all this refinishing, is anyone cleaning up the checkering?

I usually clean up the checkering after getting the finish I want. It depends on how bad the checkering was before I started as to how much I go over it. On the stock in my post I just cleaned up where too much finish got into it, the points were still sharp so I didn't have to do much to it. On others I've re-checkered them to get the points sharp.

Seems to be 100 ways to refinish stocks, none right and noe wrong, just depends on who you ask.....

It's been awhile, but I've had good results with Lin-Speed.