rking453
FNG
A few months ago I bought a T3X Hunter, pretty much just for the receiver for a .25-284 build I'm doing. It was $100 more for the wood stocked version, I ordered that figuring maybe I would want to throw that stock on a different Tikka one day.
The wood looked pretty plain, covered in whatever dyed finish Tikka uses. After looking at it real close, I could kinda see that it was actually decent looking wood underneath.
I sprayed it down with furniture stripper, and scrubbed all the finish off down to bare wood. Now it was more obvious, it was nice wood.
After a few cycles of sanding then whiskering with a damp paper towel, I used a combination of some Lockwood water soluble wood dyes. I've since started the tung oil finish. I'm a little blown away by how nicely figured this wood is. The project still isn't over, but I wanted to share some pictures with you folks of it currently wet with tung oil. Definitely worth the time so far. It makes me wonder how many of these Tikkas actually have really nicely figured wood hiding underneath that factory finish. You might want to check yours out.
The wood looked pretty plain, covered in whatever dyed finish Tikka uses. After looking at it real close, I could kinda see that it was actually decent looking wood underneath.
I sprayed it down with furniture stripper, and scrubbed all the finish off down to bare wood. Now it was more obvious, it was nice wood.
After a few cycles of sanding then whiskering with a damp paper towel, I used a combination of some Lockwood water soluble wood dyes. I've since started the tung oil finish. I'm a little blown away by how nicely figured this wood is. The project still isn't over, but I wanted to share some pictures with you folks of it currently wet with tung oil. Definitely worth the time so far. It makes me wonder how many of these Tikkas actually have really nicely figured wood hiding underneath that factory finish. You might want to check yours out.
