Been a while but I've been working on the varnish every few days for well over a month. It's been a pain in the ass to say the least. After MUCH deliberation I scrapped the idea of making a brass patch box because ultimately I dislike them and dislike every surviving Haines example even more than most. I have all the materials to do it and even worked out my own, slightly less offensive pattern, but in the end I went with my gut and skipped it. I also skipped the toe plate altogether, but now that the stock is done and buttplate is on I kind of wish I hadn't, the gun needs a touch of bling down there. The grain is good through the toe so it doesn't really need one for strength. I deviated in another way from the classic Haines styling by putting a pointed tail on the side plate instead of the squared-off one, and sculpted it a bit. I like it even if it isn't "correct" for the build.
I wanted a more waterproof finish than linseed oil for this rifle and also wanted to build a "natural" semi-gloss sheen to show the grain so I chose a tung oil/phenolic resin varnish sealer (Waterlox Original sealer and finish).
I say "natural" as in it dries to the finished sheen and doesn't have to be rubbed out to dull or polish to the semi-gloss phase. Trying to use rottenstone or whiting to adjust sheen on a carved and moulded stock just will never look right.
Waterlox is thinned so it penetrates deep into the wood for the first couple of coats and then starts to build. The solvent can be flashed off and allows a hand-rubbing but then it's like cold molasses and orange peels like the dickens. I finally found a happy medium that boils down to working small sections and timing the hand rubbing with the drying rate. So far I think there are 20-25 coats on there and I had to wet-sand most of it twice to level the finish. It is taking about two hours to apply a coat and it is exhausting trying to get it to blend out and not streak or start getting rough. Lots of time trying to get an even gloss in the edges of the mouldings and around the carvings without streaks. I learned that at an exact cetrain point of rubbing in the finish I can even out the parts on the carving by buffing with a dry toothbrush, but too soon and it glosses back out too much, too late and it streaks or just dulls out. After all this hell and stress I think I finally got the whole stock looking like I want it to and may be done with finish. I'll save taking photos for later.
During the evenings waiting for the finish to cure between coats I got all the brass filed out and polished satin and blended with burlap.
Yeah yeah yeah all this blathering and no pictures, I'm getting there I promise.
All that's left is a little more boring finish work and to make some small parts so I probably won't post too many more pictures of the process until I'm all done.