Refinishing the Restocked Remington Summit Part 1

Mentioned a while back that I wanted to refinish the stock currently on the Remington Summit.  

Backstory:  My original Remington Summit stock had started to crack.  I bought a replacement stock for a Benjamin NP2 and managed to retrofit my Remington Summit action into it.  

Really just wanted a darker finish.  Easier said than done when the wood in question is beech.  Beech is notoriously difficult to evenly tone.  The wood tends to look blotchy when a dark finish is applied.  Guess I'm saying I wanted to do this even though I didn't expect to be thrilled with the outcome.

Here goes anyway.

 

The original finish was pretty tenacious--probably an epoxy.   The chemical stripper didn't really do much.  Had to sand most of it off.

This got me further in an hour than the stripper did over three evenings. 

About here, I was reconsidering the refinish decision.  But before I threw down some color, decided to revisit the palm rest addition I had made years ago on my B26-2.

This entailed a quick side trip to the milling machine.  The blue on the table is painter's tape.  Was hoping the tape would be kinder to the wood stock than bare metal.

 A couple toe clamps with some wood shims as padding.

Had this short piece of Anschutz rail.

Not reinventing the wheel here.  The B26-2 is so comfortable to shoot, I want to make this almost identical in function.    Just need to recess a short section of the t-track rail so I can add an adjustable palm support.

About this deep.

 

And about this much for vertical adjustment.

Then cut and ground the rail stub to fit.

Eventually, a couple coats of a walnut stain from Varathane got rubbed in.

Not shown:  Didn't think it was nearly dark enough, so a coat of red mahogany was added as a top coat.  

Which got the color to here.  I gave it three or four days to dry.  And yeah, I'm not thrilled with it.  Too blotchy in spots.    

Anyway, onward, upward--or something like that.  Started rubbing in multiple coats of Birchwood Casey Tru-Oil to fill the grain.

I am pretty happy about how much more grain is visible now.  That original epoxy finish hid almost all this nice wood grain.

Rubbed the finish out then gave it a coat of paste wax.

Dropped the action back in.

Blackened the stub of Anchutz rail with Aluminum Black then screwed it home.

Still need to make the palm rest.   

Appreciate everyone who's following along.  

More soon.