Stock refinishing/dying questions.

[Blackhawk]

Has anyone used Linseed oil and rit dye(liquid) to stain/dye a stock? I don't know if it will mix well. Maybe powder and linseed oil would be better? How does the linseed oil take to the wood? Messy? I've thought about boiling some water or at least very hot and submerging the stock in the hot dye mixture. But I am uncertain as to what it would do to the wood. I could dry it in the oven at low temp but again don't know what hot water would do to the wood. Can someone give some helpful ideas.

Johnny

[BrentD]

There are many dies to use, both water and alcohol based. But I've never heard of using Rit dye. I would expect it to be very hard to control the depth and intensity plus it would probably fade. But I haven't actually tried them to know for sure.

Woodworking shops like Woodcrafters and many others sell extensive selections of dyes and stains.

You can also find quite a selection at www.trackofthewolf.com as well and I'm sure many other outlets for gun and woodworking stains are available. Even Lowes, Ace Hardware, etc will have many options.

Unless you are wanting something off the wall like Sky Blue or similar, I would stick with the more conventional woodworking materials.

[TheWoodCrafter]

Has anyone used Linseed oil and rit dye(liquid) to stain/dye a stock? I don't know if it will mix well. Maybe powder and linseed oil would be better? How does the linseed oil take to the wood? Messy? I've thought about boiling some water or at least very hot and submerging the stock in the hot dye mixture. But I am uncertain as to what it would do to the wood. I could dry it in the oven at low temp but again don't know what hot water would do to the wood. Can someone give some helpful ideas.

Johnny

You want to mix linseed oil and Rit dye together?

Don't. Will not mix.

Use regular WOOD stain or dye, not clothing dye.

Then finish with several coats linseed oil.

[7.62 Precision]

What colour are you trying to get?

Good alcohol-based wood dyes are often designed to work well to bring out the grain, depending on the wood.

Even if you are looking for a non-traditional colour, you should be able to find something meant for wood.

Linseed oil works fine, just use the right stuff and the right techniques.

[Blackhawk]

Thank you gentlemen.

I'm thinking about dying some wood stocks black. I wasn't sure if the linseed oil would mix with the liquid dye.
Or I may just strip it down and putting linseed oil on as a base and leave it as its natural color.
Thanks for the heads up.

[Tycer]

Black? That's easy. Go to your local paint store and get a half teaspoon or less of Universal Black Colorant from their tinting machine and add it to the linseed oil. You might find that just a few drops of the colorant will be sufficient. The Universal Colorants work in latex and oil finishes and epoxies.

[M. M. Wright]

The stuff you want for wood is OIL stain. I use mostly a dark, very dark brown stain as I like dark walnut on my rifles.

[7.62 Precision]

The problem with oil stains is they mostly are finishes that block the penetration of the oil to some extent, sometimes commpletely. If you are doing an oil finish, your best results will be with an alcohol-based stain.

You can control an alcohol-based stain easily by how and how many times you apply it, so if you start with a dark stain, you can get pretty dark. I would do some research and see if you can find a black stain, though. I bet you can.

Tycer's recommendation may be the best option - I have never tried colouring the oil itself yet.

[BrentD]

Woodworkers sometimes create the appearance of ebony in a white, unfigured wood like hop-hornbeam (aka ironwood). They even have a technical term for the process called "ebonizing" which you may be able to google with or do some searching on woodworking forums. Blacking wood is (or at least can be) a bit different than normal staining. I don't so it so I can't comment more than that.

[TedH]

Leather dye from your local hobby store. I used it on an old Marlin Birch stock that wouldn't take a regular oil based stain. Worked great.

[Charles]

I have used Rit dye and linseed oil (boiled) to finish stocks. As others have suggested it is an alcohol based dye. IF you are finishing beech and birch it will take an alcohol based die to stain the wood. Oil based stains while great for walnut just will make a mess on beech and birch. Fiebings leather die is what I most often used on beech and birch.

I follow the alcohol dyes with BLO for a final finish. This makes a good finish for military stocks, but for a sporter something like Tru-Oil after the dye would do better.

I will try and attach a pick of a Japanese Type I finished. It has a birch/beech stock and I dyed it as above and finished with BLO. To get a really smooth application of any stain brush on some Min-Wax Pre-Stain. It does make a big difference.

Well it tells me there are too many pixels and I don't want to fool around with resizing the pic. You will just have to intuit what it look like.

[Blackhawk]

Going to refinish my 870. Got a pint of MinWax Ebony and flat black fine textured rust oleum paint. We will see what happens.

Johnny