Removing 60s-70s Remington stock finish?

[cabin22]

I am considering refinishing my Remington Model 600 rifle bought new way back when, probably about 45 years ago. The finish is still in fairly good condition considering its life outdoors, but is starting to flake off in places, particularly around the butt plate.

So, can anyone give me an idea on the best way to remove the old finish - please be specific on products & techniques? The stock has the pressed in checkering, so any tips on getting all the finish off of those areas will also be appreciated.

I haven't settled on what to use as a new finish. I really don't mind the look of the factory finish, which wasn't all that bad. I don't foresee a need to dye/stain/color it, just get the old finish off and a new durable clear finish back on. Gloss or semi-gloss would be OK.

['ol shooter]

I really like Citri-Strip. Easy to apply and works quickly. I applied it with a 3" chip brush, after a half hour soak most of the finish came right off with a plastic scraper. A second coat finished it. I did one side at a time. Clean the stock with genuine Mineral Spirits after.

[cabin22]

Whats a chip brush? You can tell I'm new to this, right? I'm planning on using toothbrushes for getting the goop out of the checkered areas, then covering those with blue painters tape while sanding.

Any ideas for what I could use to get that old Remington "bowling pin" finish? Not that I'm committed to it, but it has held up pretty well. I read the long, long thread on the ArmorAll & Tru Oil finish. That intrigues me too, but I may save that for my old Marlin 25N.

[GladesGuy]

I like Citri-strip too on most types of finish, but the Remington "bowling pin" finish is a VERY hard finish to remove. It supposedly is a 2 part urethane clear coat. The only effective paint removers for that type of finish is a dichloromethane based stripper like Klean Strip. Klean Strip makes an aerosol version called Aircraft Paint Remover that is very powerful stuff and should take that finish off. It is VERY nasty stuff and should only be used in a well ventilated area or preferably outdoors with chemical safety gloves and eye protection. You can use a plastic scrapper to remove most of the softened finish.

[noremf]

Originally Posted by cabin22

Whats a chip brush? You can tell I'm new to this, right? I'm planning on using toothbrushes for getting the goop out of the checkered areas, then covering those with blue painters tape while sanding.

Any ideas for what I could use to get that old Remington "bowling pin" finish? Not that I'm committed to it, but it has held up pretty well. I read the long, long thread on the ArmorAll & Tru Oil finish. That intrigues me too, but I may save that for my old Marlin 25N.

These are chip brushes:

https://www.homedepot.com/s/chip%2520brushes?NCNI-5

Natural bristle throw away brushes.

Can get boxes inexpensively at Harbor Freight. 1" is about the best overall.

For removing gunk from the checkering during paint removal what you do is take say the 1" one and cut off say half of the bristles which makes it a "chip bristle scrub brush" and use that.

When removing a chemical coating, and transparent finishes are chemical coatings, DON'T use tooth brushes! Some and you will never know which ones, can dissolve to one degree or another and deposit what gets dissolved into the checkering. This also applies, depending on the bristles, to many synthetic bristled brushes.

"Chip bristle scrub brushes" work very well on other projects also as you can control how stiff you want the bristles to be .

Armor-All® is nothing more the liquid Silicone. These posts, and there are stickies and other posts address liquid Silicone dangers and contamination.

https://www.rimfirecentral.com/forums...59&postcount=1

While it addresses another what used to be a "crowd pleaser" and still might be on RFC.....I would direct your attention to the fact that the portion in blue italics is from from a Chemical Coatings "House" and is not anecdotal.

and

https://www.rimfirecentral.com/forums...08&postcount=5

and closer to home.

https://www.rimfirecentral.com/forums...6&postcount=37

Adding Armor-All® to Tru-Oil® is not recommended by Birchwood Casey®!

I don't know of any labs, Chemical Coatings Houses, chemists or professional woodworkers that would even remotely suggest deliberately adding a caustic, aggressive and invasive chemical contaminate to any chemical coatings finishes on Planet Earth.

Also Armor-All® is not miscible with Tru-Oil® so it will simply create layers on top of the TO giving the impression that the TO has hardened quicker. It does not.

What it does is:



Your choice if you want to use the "miracle elixir".

noremf(George)

[Flintlock28]

Do yourself a favor.....

After removing a couple of finishes like this; (I believe the product name was "Texacril"), use a dulled knife edge, along with a heat gun. The dulled knife edge, used with a heat gun that is set up just high enough to soften the Texacril, is probably the fastest, easiest way to remove the finish. I would not use a chemical stripper, except for maybe the checkered areas.

It takes some practice to determine what is just enough heat, along with applying just enough pressure. The Texacril will strip off in sections. This is the best method I've found.

p.s. some chemical strippers won't do jack to the finish, others will strip it.

[cabin22]

Thank you George, not only do I now know what a chip brush is, I know I need to do more homework.

Flintlock - That technique may be more than I want to undertake, especially since I don't have a heat gun, don't plan on buying one, and have no stocks to practice on.

Is there any way to "touch up" those small nicks in the factory finish, or where it has worn off (almost looks like the finish "shrunk way from") near the butt plate, to protect the bare wood? This is a hunting gun, and is not likely to get babied any more in the future than it has in the past. Those PA rocks, sleet, and snow are not kind...

[noremf]

Touching up blemishes all depends on how "invisible" you want them to be.

Number of posts and stickies on this but as an overview.

What follows assumes that the blemish has not gone down to the bare wood in which case before you can fix the blemish you need to color that area which is a horse of a different color.

The first thing that has to be done is determine what the finish is on there.

There is a sticky on stripping stocks:

https://rimfirecentral.com/rfcftp/sto...0and%20why.pdf

which goes over the protocol to determine what is on there that can be used in a small area first but unfortunately you will have destroy a portion of the finish to finger that out. Does not sound to me like you want to do that.

I am not a collector so I can't address a 45 year old Remington 600 exactly so you need somebody who has first hand knowledge of the finish and by that I mean can differentiate between the chemical coatings used on that firearm not just an anecdotal statement like "I used superduperorange galactic quality stripper and the finish came right off".

I personally would give Master "Flintlock28" a high degree of credibility but he is addressing the removal of an entire finish, not just touching up a blemish. If you wanted to do that, remove the finish, for a non-lacquer finish then the heat gun is the best choice hands down!!!!!!!!!!

If only a blemish it is kinda overkill.

Beginning around 1922 or so the dominate finish for mass produced wooden stock civilian firearms and non-engineered wooden furniture was Lacquer. It still is.

If not lacquer then "oil" finishes were used but that description does not accurately indicate what an "oil" finish is. It is NOT and plant/vegetable finish. It IS a highly modified oil, either plant/vegetable or synthetic with a resin added to make it work. As soon as you add the resin the chemical becomes a varnish. There is nothing wrong with a varnish other then consumers don't respond that term well.

Lacquer is only 1 of 2 finishes that will reconstitute when a new layer is added into a single layer and by doing that will not leave any witness lines. If you put on 10 coats of Lacquer you will end up with 1 coat 10 coats thick.

ALL other finishes do not reconstitute so if you put on 10 coats you get 10 coats of the finish.

So you get a blemish or nick...whatever......and it penetrates the finish to whatever degree of depth.

Touching up with lacquer if lacquer was the finish will simply reconstitute the finish around the blemish into a new single layer and thus will not show an "edges" etc. where that was done. ie: Witness lines.

If not lacquer and lets say you chew up say 3 layers of the 10 layers of the finish. You touch it up by putting on new 3 layers. You now have 13 layers around the blemish and 3 at the blemish and will create visible "edges" or witness lines.

On a "working" gun with wood that is less then either presentation or museum grade witness lines don't really cause folks to lose any sleep.

The name of the game in that case is fundamentally to minimize the visibility of the witness lines which is not that hard since it basically is to match the sheen more then anything else.

Most factory mass produced wooden stocked consumer rifles and non-engineered furniture are semi-glossed finished. Lots of reasons for that which would make this post even longer then my normal "verbose" ones.

If in fact the finish is not Lacquer then there are a whole bunch of finishes you can use to touch up the blemish. Unless the finish on there is a high gloss you really want to stay away form high gloss finishes like Tru-Oil® high gloss poly's etc. They will work but then you have to "dull" them down which in many cases will create additional witness lines.

Number of wiping varnishes that work well from a semi-gloss finish, easy to apply, durable etc.

These are some:



There are either no plant/vegetable oils in them or if they are they are in a very small amount that have been modified to the point that chemically they are no longer considered plant/vegetable oils. Again nothing wrong with that.

I don't recommend finishes etc. but will say that the Formby's® products along with MinWax® are the most used.

Another product that seems to please folks is:



It is not a finish in itself.

It is fundamentally nothing more then a whole bunch of solvents that soften the finishes and allows you to kind of "schmear" it around to fill in the blemish area(s).

Any more ??? feel free to ask either here or via a PM.

Good luck.

noremf(George)

PS: The original Texacryl finish was a wipe on poly. The new formulation is an acrylic water borne lacquer.

[cabin22]

Thank you so much George. I bought my gun new around 1968-1970, so maybe it has the original Remington Texacryl finish on it vs. the later versions. If so, is the wipe on poly you refer to among those on list you provided, or are those wiping varnishes distinctly different from wipe on poly. I have a lot to learn regarding wood stock finishes and finishing techniques,, and I appreciate your advice and those of other here on RFC.

Ammo testing on my rimfires is so much easier....

[noremf]

Originally Posted by cabin22

Thank you so much George. I bought my gun new around 1968-1970, so maybe it has the original Remington Texacryl finish on it vs. the later versions. If so, is the wipe on poly you refer to among those on list you provided, or are those wiping varnishes distinctly different from wipe on poly. I have a lot to learn regarding wood stock finishes and finishing techniques,, and I appreciate your advice and those of other here on RFC.

Ammo testing on my rimfires is so much easier....

Unless you have the weapon in hand there and test the finish or simply remove it and start all over, there is no guarantee that the original finish was Texacryl. Could also be a lacquer.

Lacquers are actually more robust then virtually all of the standard poly finishes ala:

https://rimfirecentral.com/rfcftp/sto...20finishes.pdf

And as such are tough to differentiate from them.

First off plant/vegetable oils were never used as a wood finish. They suck as that.

They had to be modified to even come close such as being polymerized, made bacteria, mold and insect proof, set up so they would not go rancid in days or even hours etc. Even then they are not robust but do have some unique positive attributes.

Wiping varnishes are designed to mimic the plant/vegetable oil in the name. Such as Formby's® Tung Oil finish. It is designed to mimic the positive attributes of Tung Oil without all the downsides.

They are not poly's.

They have a "color cast" also designed to mimic whatever plant/vegetable oil they are mimicking. Generally that color cast is more to the "brown" side of the color scale.

Poly's or Urethane's are not designed to do mimic anything. They are a straight transparent petroleum based finish. They also have inherent "color casts" because they are synthetics. The difference is that the color casts will not mimic any of the plant/vegetable oils but rather various shades of refined petroleum. Generally those finishes have color casts more to the yellow-bronze side of the color scale.

This sticky show some of what that means.

https://rimfirecentral.com/rfcftp/sto...20topcoats.pdf

Is in a virus free PDF format if you wish to save it to your local PC. Takes a bit to load.

Making a patch that will make the blemish truly invisible can be done anywhere from easily to very difficult taking easily up to a month with a fair amount of labor and a fair amount of artistic talent. Looooooong and involved process describing how to do that. More then can be typed in here for sure.

This sticky goes over how to do that if you are interested.

https://rimfirecentral.com/rfcftp/sto...0invisible.pdf

I mention that because you have indicated you are not enthralled with stripping the stock and redoing it from scratch which in virtually every case is easier.

You also have indicated that the rifle will be a "working one" and as such the "invisibility" factor is not a deal breaker.

noremf(George)

EDITORIAL COMMENT:

While you might be a tad overwhelmed with the thought of refinishing a stock it is actually easier to do then making a blemish even close to being invisible in many cases.

What is harder though is to educate yourself on what the various finishes do and don't do so you can decide in advance which finish meets your desires and needs.

The protocols themselves are not rocket science stuff but they do require that they are adhered to especially the recoat times which almost universally are letting sit overnight before the next coat.

[cabin22]

Thanks, George! I have much to read & absorb. I appreciate the direct comparison data, that certainly helps in the decision making process.