How do you repair damage to a finished maple stock?

[Bon Sauvage]

Gentlemen, my experience in gunstocks is limited to walnut and whatever passes for wood on Chinese made SKS rifles. I've see plenty of pictures of gorgeous curly maple stocked rifles on this site but what do you do when they receive cuts or scrapes in the field that leave white wood showing?

My first instinct would be to cuss a blue streak and then look for a dull spoon to open the veins of my wrist. I know that dings and dent add character but white wood showing on an otherwise beautiful stock makes me cringe. The thought of taking the wood down and recreating the original finish makes me cringe even more.


Ogre

 

[paulvallandigham]

You are more likely to get dinks than scratches or gouges. With dents, or " dinks", I use a steam iron, with a wet cloth placed over the scratch and try to lift the dent out. This takes lots of soaking, and lots of steaming, but eventually the wood comes back up. Usually, you only have to then touch up the finish with rubbing in another coat.

With scratches or gouges, you have to decide if wood should be replaced. That can require the hand of experts, depending on how large, and where on the stock the gouge is located. There are different methods of doing this kind of repair, and the choice often depends on where the gouge is located, and how small or large it is.

In most cases you will need to restain the bare or " White wood as you describe it ". Matching the stain to the original is going to be the difficult part of this. All I can suggest is to do what I learned to do, that is to buy a piece of wood similar to what the stock is made from, and then mix up and thin down stains until you get a color that seems to match the stock. You will feel like an Alchemist when you finally find it, but there is not likely to be a greater feeling of satisfaction in your life for awhile. By all means, if you find the right combination of color, don't throw out any of the stain that is not used. Write down as best you can what you did to make the right color, and keep it with the stain in a sealed bottle somewhere. mark the bottle as to what it is. Once the stain is done, the scratch or gouge will not look so bad. Then rub in a couple of coats of finish and the area of the stock will look as good as it is going to unless you do strip the entire stock down and refinish the whole thing.

Scratches and Gouges are like old age wrinkles. As much as we hate them, each tells a story, and are
" Earned "! Don't be ashamed of them. Only museum pieces last down through the centuries unmarked. And they get that way never being used. More is the shame of it.

 

[Zonie]

Most, if not all of the Maple stocks you see pictures of here are stained with either a alcohol based, water based or acid stain.

All of these soak fairly deeply into the wood so it would take a pretty severe scratch to be deep enough to expose the unstained wood.

If a very deep scratch was made which does expose the white Maple, it would be a simple task to restain the exposed wood and refinish the area.

 

[reddogge]

Like Zonie says. I wouldn't go to a lot of trouble in refinishing. Just hit it with some alcohol stain and then re-oil. They are character marks and look perfectly natural on a well used rifle.

 

[Hayduke]

Dings and scratches add character... and chicks dig character. :wink: