I have made a few.
In love an oil finish, and prefer danish oil myself. I use Rustin's , but any decent oil finish with a decent amount of Tung oil will do.
One of the reasons I like Rustin's is that their stains can be mixed with the oil, that leaves you with lots of options regarding the tint and how heavy a stain you'd like to apply.
First coat: dilute with natural turpentine ( NOT the synthetic white spirit stuff - it's quite a different product ) and wipe on liberally, let soak for about 30 minutes, and wipe off.
Any staining is best done in this step, so make a couple of trial pieces using the offcuts to determine the color. Remember the color will darken a bit with every coat of oil, and will change with age.
From then on, there's a difference between open pored woods ( like walnut ) and closed woods ( like maple ).
For open pored woods, you will have to close the grain, a gunstock is subjected to a lot of moisture, so pores should be sealed.
Remember to seal the inner surfaces of the stock as well, or the gunstock will be prone to moisture-invasion and warp - even a minimum amount of warp can seriously affect accuracy.
To seal, you can sand the stock with oil till it forms a decent "slurry", let it firm up just a bit, and then squeegie it off , using about a 45 degree angle relative to the grain, preferrably against the pore. This will fill the pores with an oil/woodflour mixture, effectively sealing oit moisture and will smooth out the surface in the process.
Let dry ( give it a couple of days to let the oils polymerize and form decent crosslinks ) and then sand smooth.
From then on, both types of wood are treated likewise: apply a coat of oil and rub it in, using your bare hands, a nylon stocking, or even a scotch pad if there's still some irregularitiy in the surface. Wipe clean with a lintfree cloth and let dry.
After the first coat, you shouldn't dilute the oil anymore. And if you're happy with the color, you can leave out the stain as well in all the successive layers.
There's an old adagium for oiling gunstocks: Once a day for a week, once a week for a month, once a month for a year, and yearly after that. There's nothing comparable to a decent quality oil-finish on a beatiful wooden gunstock. Good luck, and have fun.
Regards,
Job
