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Joined: 17 Jan 2014 Posts: 1381 Location: Denver, Colorado

There are some guns that you will not dare to mess with because they're either far-too-original or too-valuable (emotionally or otherwise) to take the risk of doing something stupid. Then, there are those examples where you simply want them to look as good as they function, and if you happen to do something that doesn't turn out as you had wished, there are other options, or there are folks that can set them right (for a small fee). I have an early Ithaca pump that has a small (but noticeable) chip out of the head of the stock. It's obviously been there for a long time and hasn't really been an issue for previous owners, but this new owner wants to remedy the matter. I'm in the process of soaking the head of the stock in acetone to eliminate any oils as part of prepping it for some minor crack repairs that shouldn't be any issue. What I am also contemplating is using some type of stainable fill material to address this shallow chip. There are a number of products on the market that claim to be a solution to this type of problem with fine wooden furniture. Does anybody here have any first -hand experience with them?

Soaking oily wood in acetone only pushes the oil in deeper only to return one warm day and push any repair you have made off the surface. To de-grease with solvent use Methylene Chloride. This will break the oils down and make them soluble in water. Or soak in Purple Industrial Degreaser over night and wash in hot tap water. Then wipe with vinegar to neutralize.
Then cut a neat little notch where the chip is. Fit a slightly proud block of walnut to the notch. set it in place with a slow cure epoxy in 2 days sand the block to conform to the original contour of the stock.
Now you have a repair that will handle the recoil at the edge of the receiver it will match fairly well if you get the color close. I have fixed many, many of these breaks on 37n's and this is what works. any thing else eventually fails.
When the new stocks on Ithaca 37n's shrank over time the stock became just loose enough that the receiver edge acted as a chisel when set back on firing. part of the problem is the slotted 1/4"/20 stock screw that is so hard to tighten without the factory screw driver that fit over the whole head not just in the slot. some are round some are square some later ones are hex those a 1/4" socket will work on. the others I change to the modern version. Putting a "big" slot screw driver in the stock runs the risk of cracking the head if the driver is not carefully centered.
Good luck to you If you have more questions ask away

Joined: 17 Jan 2014 Posts: 1381 Location: Denver, Colorado

byrdog: Thank you for that. I'll muck about a bit more on this stock and see how close I can get with it. I'll even shoot it and see how it holds up. But I know you're right. Eventually, I'll take it to someone who can do it justice.

Joined: 09 Dec 2012 Posts: 691

I would imagine the degree of oil soaking has an impact on the results. A stock that is so saturated with oil that it is spongy or shows other evidence that the oil has penetrated deeply into the wood would need those other chemicals.

I haven't had any issues sticking the end of Ithaca stocks down in a some acetone to get the oil out. After a day or so the acetone was stained from the oil.

Other folks also use acetone and whiting to make a paste to pack into the end and clean it out. I have used baby powder and paint stripper, paint stripper and powderized kitty litter and other stuff to pack into the ends of the stocks to leach out the oil.

this was a 1948 stock that I first used the orange paint stripper mixture and then soaked in acetone for a couple days. It has been almost a year and it still looks like that with no seepage back up. while some of the staining was left, the wood is sound and will hold up until I am long gone.

the 2nd picture and 3rd pics were of a stock I am fixing with exactly the same kind of chip. That was orange stripper mixed with baby powder. You can see how it was turning brown from the oil leaching out.

There are lots of different viable techniques that will work, it all depends on the severity of the issue.

A gunsmith friend actually had a military stock brought to him that they covered with oven cleaner and let sit out in the driveway to leach out oil.

if you do a google search on removing oil from wood, and other combinations of words, there are lots of techniques people use

the absolute worst oil soaked wood issue was one I witnessed about 25 yrs ago. there is a historical building from the stage coach era about a mile from the house. an addition had oak flooring. a woman bought/leased one section to put a video store in. she asked someone how to go over the wood and was told to "oil" it.

yep you guessed it, she used motor oil. the wood was as black and stinking as you can imagine from having motor oil put on old oak and soaking it right up

Joined: 17 Jan 2014 Posts: 1381 Location: Denver, Colorado

Like David, I think the amount of oil soaking will determine the level of effort needed to stabilize a stock prior to starting a repair. I'm hoping that the one I'm presently playing with really wasn't too-bad (it didn't seem to be, at least to me). I'm done with my glue work, the next step is my fill experiment. I have read on these fill compounds and it seems that their primary failing is their ability to take enough stain to match their surroundings. I'm going to add some walnut dust (from this stock's interior) and I'm looking to try Pilkington's English Red to see if I can match the original reddish tone of this stock.

Acetone only thins the oil to a water like viscosity and then it goes both out and in. Chemistry always moves from a concentrated to a weaker form given the vector to do it with. It Is called entropy . It is a law of Physics and cannot be made to not occur. So the only alternative is to change the chemistry. I have used Easy Off on stocks and old furniture as a stripper. it saponifies the oils and greases so the become soapy and water soluble . wood contains tannins it is acidic the base sodium hydroxide in the oven cleaner or in the purple degreaser darkens the wood. neutralizing with vinegar will bring the natural color back.
If you buy Kleen Strip "Liquid" stripper you have Methylene Chloride. this is about the same price as acetone and will eat the oil and draw it out of the wood as the concentration of oil will become greater from in the wood and will bleed to the outside.
I know this looks like I just want to be right here and that is not the case. I hope that this info will make the efforts of others be more fruitful. I had to learn the hard way so I changed how I did things.

Joined: 17 Jan 2014 Posts: 1381 Location: Denver, Colorado

Byrdog: From what I remember from the various chemistry courses I've been subjected to over the years, what you're saying makes perfect sense. If this stock had been really soaked, I would have been forced to try what you have suggested. I'm thinking my repairs should hold, but if they don't I'll know what to try next. My fill experiment was a bust. This stuff is too granular and simply won't stain adequately. Oh well! I then went with an epoxy fill, which I added a little stain too. That seems to have slowed it's set-up time, so I guess I've replaced one experiment with another.

Blend a few drops of food color in a small dish to make a wood colored brown mix some epoxy and add enough talk to make a putty then add just enough of the color to get the color close. apply to a clean surface leaving enough to sand down to the shape you need.
To much food color will render the epoxy into a flexible solid because it has propylene glycol in it so only use a little and that wont change it enough to matter.

Slightly off topic but there is a step-by-step repair of a Beretta S05 stock broken through the wrist on page 47 in the latest issue of the Sporting Shot. http://bluetoad.com/publication/?m=18740&l=1

Joined: 09 Dec 2012 Posts: 691

We all know you are simply trying to help and make sure everyone has good results and are not simply "trying to be right".

I have only been redoing these old stocks for a little over a year, and I can surmise that probably I have had decent results is because I vary what I am doing. I start with leaching the oil out with the paint stripper mixture, then the acetone soak, sometimes followed back with more paint stripper mixture

and I change the acetone and agitate

and I will take the stock out in the yard and flip the stuff off (a mini-centrifugal motion) etc.

I am going give what you mentioned a try and see how it works on the gun that is going down to Kentucky.

I have a friend/distant family member that is building a collection of Ithaca 37's by year for his 3 boys. Each will get a 20,16 and 12 from a particular year. It so happens that I have a 1951 16ga that will fill in a slot. I just am going to fix the stock for him.

Joined: 17 Jan 2014 Posts: 1381 Location: Denver, Colorado

That is quite the online publication. Neat story on damasus barrel forging, is that a freebie?

the old winchesters that I've played with responded oK to this ... we are probably quite familiar with whiskering when finishing a stock . What I've found is that the heat draws out oil . Gets it good and juicy and it starts out . I heat it , wipe the outties , reheat and wipe etc . Some have gone quite deep . What I haven't played with is - when it starts to cool , it'll want to suck things back in . This might be a great time for a juicy epoxy etc to really deep harden that area . Wood to receiver mainly .... DES or Byrddog - you may know whether this is a cautionary thing , but has worked pretty good on my m12's .

Joined: 09 Dec 2012 Posts: 691

Lots and lots of ways to remove oil. I did some more reading and there is lots of success talked about using simple old fashioned whiting or kitty litter to suck out the oil after it is thinned.

years ago when I worked in machine shops, we would take kerosone, squirt it all over the concrete floor and put oil dry/kitty litter down.

by morning, every bit of oil was leached out of the concrete and it was white, concrete in a machine shop gets really oil soaked, from all the different kinds of coolant. this method kept the floors clean.

it is the same principal we are all dancing around here. a solvent to get the oil flowing and finally a material / technique to draw it out of the wood.

some folks even talked about simply packing kitty litter in around the stock in black garbage bag and sticking it out in the sun to heat up.

There is never only one way to do something. I constantly have to remove oil from gunstocks in order to make repairs last. Each is an adventure in what method will work with that piece of wood. I have used all of the methods mentioned previously. In fact, I have been working on an Ithaca Flues and a Parker Hammer gun that contained so much oil that they bled oil for four months before I got it all out.

Thought: Oil of today is NOT the oil of yesterday. I have become convinced that the oil we are dealing with in "older" guns is not petroleum based but animal based, in some cases. The animal variety seems to have a permanency that demands persistence in removal. And I have resorted to using multiple methods alternating in order to remove it. Success comes slowly in those cases.