Minesweeper3433
45B/91F
Back in the first week of December forum member lmmike posted a Fajen maple stock for sale here on the for sale page. I made an offer and found out that he also had a piece of figured maple lumber that he was looking to sell. My Roommate Tucker2844 here on the forum wanted in on it so we bought both pieces of maple one for each of us. Tucker and I happen to be going to Colorado School of Trades together and in the same class and in the portion of the school were you are allowed more freedom for your projects so the timing was perfect for a couple of builds.
Tucker will be posting pictures of our experiences with learning how to work with maple and of the project as it progress's as he knows how to use picture links better then me.
The plans so far for his rifle is to build a 6.5x55 mannlicher on a barreled action I gave him for rent payment. Love having all those extra "future projects" laying around. He decided to buy the board lumber from lmmike which he then had shaped in Colorado Springs by Jim Bizio of heritage walnut almost immediately upon arrival. The stock came out far better then we could have imagined and best of all it had a completely different grain pattern then the Fajen stock I got out of the deal with lmmike. This will allow us to experiment with different finishing techniques on our rifles in the project.
On the subject of finishing we made small flats out of a piece of figured scrap left over from shaping for testing purposes and those pictures will be up soon once Tucker gets them loaded to photo bucket. Some techniques we have tested so far include, tannic acid and aqua fortis, potassium permanganate, chromic acid. Personally I had a rather negative experience with the last of which left me not wanting to play with it again no matter how nice it looked. I planed the flats level and went over them with 400 and then 600 grit paper and whiskered all the flats at 600 till texture when wet was uniform across the figure in the wood.
Starting with the potassium permanganate it was very simple to use and worked fast as the mixture I was trying was alcohol based and dried quickly. The only thing that bothered me a bit was the grain that was darkened by the mixture had a very slight purplish hue to it. Other then that very simple fast and safe comparatively. Apply let dry and sand down top grain exposing the blonde again but now with darker accents.
The tannic acid and aqua fortis while a bit more involved in process gave a very nice darker color to the maple over all and accented the figured areas very well. This finish also seamed to burnish really nicely with a cloth after being sanded down after drying. To apply this you have to put tannic acid on the wood and after drying apply the aqua fortis and warm the wood with a hot iron or in our case a heat gun. A warning for those that want to give this a shot the wood turns as black as ebony when you heat it, just sand it off to reveal the figure and wood again. Tucker had the idea to test out applying the aqua fortis when the tanic acid was still wet to see if changed anything. This caused the a little bit darker effect over all and took less time.
The Chromic acid while very attractive once applied scared me in use. An instructor suggested that I try thinning it down 1 to 1 with denatured alcohol before applying. I put 1 Tsp in a plastic medicine cup and poured some denatured alcohol in another cup. I then measured out enough alcohol and poured it into the acid. About 2 seconds later the two liquids began to react to each other and spattered smoked and splashed making a very a acrid smell that burnt the nostrils. I cleared the bench and let things calm down. I decided to go ahead and try this mixture anyway and dipping a q-tip into the acid caused the reaction to occur again briefly. I applied the acid let dry neutralized the mess with baking soda. After sanding the result was very beautiful but not worth the burning in my nose and the mess it made. Also tried uncut acid however the result was not as vibrant.
Tucker will be posting pictures of our experiences with learning how to work with maple and of the project as it progress's as he knows how to use picture links better then me.
The plans so far for his rifle is to build a 6.5x55 mannlicher on a barreled action I gave him for rent payment. Love having all those extra "future projects" laying around. He decided to buy the board lumber from lmmike which he then had shaped in Colorado Springs by Jim Bizio of heritage walnut almost immediately upon arrival. The stock came out far better then we could have imagined and best of all it had a completely different grain pattern then the Fajen stock I got out of the deal with lmmike. This will allow us to experiment with different finishing techniques on our rifles in the project.
On the subject of finishing we made small flats out of a piece of figured scrap left over from shaping for testing purposes and those pictures will be up soon once Tucker gets them loaded to photo bucket. Some techniques we have tested so far include, tannic acid and aqua fortis, potassium permanganate, chromic acid. Personally I had a rather negative experience with the last of which left me not wanting to play with it again no matter how nice it looked. I planed the flats level and went over them with 400 and then 600 grit paper and whiskered all the flats at 600 till texture when wet was uniform across the figure in the wood.
Starting with the potassium permanganate it was very simple to use and worked fast as the mixture I was trying was alcohol based and dried quickly. The only thing that bothered me a bit was the grain that was darkened by the mixture had a very slight purplish hue to it. Other then that very simple fast and safe comparatively. Apply let dry and sand down top grain exposing the blonde again but now with darker accents.
The tannic acid and aqua fortis while a bit more involved in process gave a very nice darker color to the maple over all and accented the figured areas very well. This finish also seamed to burnish really nicely with a cloth after being sanded down after drying. To apply this you have to put tannic acid on the wood and after drying apply the aqua fortis and warm the wood with a hot iron or in our case a heat gun. A warning for those that want to give this a shot the wood turns as black as ebony when you heat it, just sand it off to reveal the figure and wood again. Tucker had the idea to test out applying the aqua fortis when the tanic acid was still wet to see if changed anything. This caused the a little bit darker effect over all and took less time.
The Chromic acid while very attractive once applied scared me in use. An instructor suggested that I try thinning it down 1 to 1 with denatured alcohol before applying. I put 1 Tsp in a plastic medicine cup and poured some denatured alcohol in another cup. I then measured out enough alcohol and poured it into the acid. About 2 seconds later the two liquids began to react to each other and spattered smoked and splashed making a very a acrid smell that burnt the nostrils. I cleared the bench and let things calm down. I decided to go ahead and try this mixture anyway and dipping a q-tip into the acid caused the reaction to occur again briefly. I applied the acid let dry neutralized the mess with baking soda. After sanding the result was very beautiful but not worth the burning in my nose and the mess it made. Also tried uncut acid however the result was not as vibrant.
