What stain on replacement stock???

Well, after 2 months I received my k43 replacement stock from Poland! Its really nice! I want opinions.....should I stain it? Seal it? both? What stain would you use? I just want to put the original in the safe.

If it were mine I'd probably throw a little light stain on it to try and darken it a bit and then maybe a little bit of oil on top of it. Really do whatever you think looks good, it's a repro stock no harm no foul.

Do you already ahve the hardware for it?

Why are you swapping out the original? Crack somewhere that's hard to fix?

Cyrano4747 said:

If it were mine I'd probably throw a little light stain on it to try and darken it a bit and then maybe a little bit of oil on top of it. Really do whatever you think looks good, it's a repro stock no harm no foul.

Do you already ahve the hardware for it?

Why are you swapping out the original? Crack somewhere that's hard to fix?

Click to expand...

No cracks or anything.....just want to save it is all.

Save it from what?

If it's just going to the range I see no problem in leaving it on. If you're going to be rolling around in the mud with it reenacting then yeah, don't wreck a real one.

I shoot mine with original wood all the time.

the original stamps/sn, etc are all intact, but faint. Putting it in safe for now and using reproduction stock until I find someone that can restore the original stock. Already put a shooters kit in it. Its just what I want to do.

What kind of restoration are you looking to do? Unless there is damage there really isn't much to do. You're not going to resurrect faint markings with a restoration. That's how you ruin an otherwise good stock.

You're getting new metal bits for the repro stock and not swapping out the ones already installed on your existing stock, right? The buttplate and nose cap are whatever, but I wouldn't recommend removing the recoil lug or the band spring unless you absolutely have to.

FWIW, the kind of light use that a range queen rifle gets isn't going to damage or fade the stamps. Setting aside idiots with sand paper, that comes from heavy handling and the sort of cleaning a gun gets in service (e.g. scraping and re-oiling).

There's nothing wrong with swapping on a repro stock, it's just unnecessary.

Also, seriously, beware anyone advertising services to "restore" antique military stocks. 99 times in 100 you're basically paying to have the gun refinished and wrecked. I've seen a lot of "restored" guns that were just utterly hosed.

For the new one i’d just put two or three coats of boiled linseed oil on it and call it a day. It will/should darken it quite a bit.

If you want a really dark color you can a a very small amount of alcohol based dye to the oil.

Alternatively velvet oil would be a good choice.