Woodsrunner, Is this normal for walnut?

Hello all,
I have went over my woodsrunner stock twice with 150 grit and the grain seems very open to me. There are little crevices or voids in the wood so to speak. Is this normal? I don't want to sand it too much with this coarse paper. It is smooth but the little voids are still there. This is my very first kit, and first time finishing walnut, so I'm sorry if this question seems silly to some. The advice is always very much appreciated.

Your wood, based on your pics, looks pretty normal to me. I would probably do a little more light sanding with a finer grit, or maybe just steel-wooling, of that dark area in the first pic. If nothing changes as you sand, just leave it alone. It's wood. It's not going to be uniform.

That's normal for walnut, but I would use 320 grit to finish sanding. There is a grain sealer for walnut, not for sure who make it though.

Norman Brooks said:

...There is a grain sealer for walnut....

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Sorry, I disagree. Don't seal the grain. It's the wood itself that makes for interesting figuring. If you seal it at this stage, you mask the irregulaties that make for the most interesting and unique figuring. There are other ways of moderating something that jumps out as being more than you want at some later stage of finishing.

Just continue sanding with finer grits, 220 thru 320, then stain of choice.
I do not recommend steel wool until after nitrate treatment, unless you want little rust spots or freckles. Steel wool is OK after aquafortis. Or just switch to proper grits of Scotchbrite.

Ok, Thank ya'll! I'm going to move on to 220 now then.

CuNosecap said:

...
I do not recommend steel wool until after nitrate treatment, unless you want little rust spots or freckles. Steel wool is OK after aquafortis. ...

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Good point. If you steel-wool, just make damn sure you get all the wool dust out before you do anything else.

After steel-wooling I'll brush, then blow with compressed air, then wipe with a tack rag.

I really like boiled linseed oil or tung oil for walnut, may be better/other options those are just the two I’ve used!

Walnut typically has large, open pores. If you want to fill them after sanding to 320 grit put 4 or 5 coats of Tru Oil on the wood. Go over it lightly with grey Scotchbrite between coats. Give the true oil a couple of days to cure and then wet sand the stock back to the wood using water. The stock will look terrible at this stage. When it dries you can then add any stain, oil, or finish that you want to bring out the highlights in the wood. All you have done with the Tru Oil is to fill those large pores to the level you want. I don't like them completely full since it can look too much like some modern finish. What you might want to do is take enough time to practice on some scraps and gain a little confidence in getting the look you want. I like the look of linseed oil too. I use it after the filling and sanding process and put varnish finish of some kind as the top coats.

My original plan was to use Watco Danish oil only to finish the stock, However I love BLO on most anything I've ever put it on. I have time to look around and figure out what I want to do. I do know I don't want to "stain" it any darker.

Hi,
Walnut has open rays or pores that need to be filled. If you don't use a filler of some sort, it will take many coats of finish to fill the pores. Some like a dull in the wood oil finish with the pores mostly still open. That is not an authentic finish except for some later 19th century military guns and perhaps some really primitive and rustic American guns. On non military guns I make in walnut, I almost always fill the pores. I do so by applying finish (in my case Sutherland-Welles polymerized tung oil) with 220 sand paper and sanding the wood and finish until a slurry of sawdust and finish forms on the surface. I let that dry to a crust and then sand it smooth with 320 grit paper. Then I apply finish in thin coats that are let to sit for 10-15 minutes and then completely wiped off. I apply the coats until I get the sheen I desire. Here are walnut stocked guns finished that way.






dave

Please disregard my statement about aquafortis with regards to your WALNUT stock. My mistake. But if it were maple…

@The Crisco Kid and @dave_person are spot on. Walnut needs the pores sealed for a smooth finish. I've used a sealer made by Tru-Oil that works pretty good.

TDM said:

@The Crisco Kid and @dave_person are spot on. Walnut needs the pores sealed for a smooth finish. I've used a sealer made by Tru-Oil that works pretty good.

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Except that Dave is way ahead of me in talent!

I let the finish do the sealing.

There was no pre-stain sealing done on this walnut stock, and frankly, I think it turned out pretty nice:

The Crisco Kid said:

Except that Dave is way ahead of me in talent!

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Ha! I was just getting ready to edit my post to add that when I seal Walnut it just doesn't seem to end up looking like @dave_person 's work!

American black walnut has pores.That is normal. European walnut does not have the pores. But European walnut is far more expensive.

What some, maybe most, folks don't know is that Black Walnut, juglans nigra, is a different species than English Walnut, juglans regia. The English Walnut is referred to as thin shell walnut since the nuts have a thinner shell than the nuts from the black walnut. Thin shell includes all the French, Persian, etc. walnuts.

I have been thinking about this a great deal. I think it would look cool to leave the pores in the wood. I'm not going for a show winner, this is a hunting rifle and will be used as such. However, I'm going down to the Grits / Saw Mill today and buying a piece of Black walnut to experiment on. I'm going to try the methods you all described here and try one with Tung oil and BLO both finished off with wax and see what I like best. Thanks again for all the advice, you guys are made of AWESOME SAUCE.

Hi,
American black walnut is quite different than Juglans regia (aka English, French, Italian, Turkish, Armenian, Circassian, European walnut) and is usually less dense. I build many British military guns but often have to use black walnut for the stocks because long blanks of English walnut are hard to find and very expensive. So I have to bite the bullet, use black walnut and make it look like the English species. While you can find black walnut with beautiful warm reddish tones, it often has a cold purplish brown color that I dislike. So I warm it up with yellow dye.

That brings out warm and redder tones in black walnut.

This shows a piece of black walnut with just finish on it compared with black walnut stained to look like English walnut.


On these muskets, the black walnut is simply finished with a tung oil based varnish that mostly fills the pores but not completely like British muskets of the era. However, it still is a bit shiny again as were the original guns.







dave