Refinishing a Stock: Cleaning Out Wood Pores

[mrh477]

Hey folks,

I have an old LC Smith side by side stock I am currently refinishing. It had some old gun oil in it so I used Brownell's "Old Fashioned Whiting" to get the oil out. It worked very well for removing gun oil from the wood but now some of the whiting powder seems to be caked into the pores of the wood. I couldn't brush it out so I tried vacuuming it out but that didn't work very well, and then I also tried soaking the stock in acetone hoping that the powder would dissolve into the solvent but that didn't seem to work either. I've attached a few pictures showing the problem. Anyone run into this issue before? Thoughts?

Thanks!

 

[beag_nut]

I would begin by asking Brownell's for the "safety data sheet", which they are required to furnish. Then it should be obvious what the "whiting" is, and what would be a suitable solvent. Acetone is only one solvent among many. There are MANY different solvents available; one of the most versatile is lacquer thinner. The whiting in the checkering looks like it could be removed by judicious brushing. Some of the other whiting might actually be simply very dry wood pores. That could be tested by a drop of gun oil; if the whiting disappears it may not be whiting.

 

[dfariswheel]

Whiting is Calcium Carbonate, basically chalk dust.

One technique is to "whisker" the stock.
This is usually done to get as smooth a finish as possible during a refinish.
When many stock stains and finishes are applied tiny splinters stand up and cause the surface to be rough requiring more sanding.

An old wood workers technique is to dampen the wood with a sponge or rag and water, then quickly force dry the wood with a heat gun, torch, or stove burner.
The heat causes the water to flash into steam and that causes the splinters to stand up.
Then use 0000 steel wool or a synthetic pad to lightly rub the wood.
The loops of the steel wool or the synthetic pad catch the splinters and cut them off, where sand paper just presses them back down.
These days, it's recommended to use synthetic pads instead of steel wool because the steel wool contains oil to prevent it from rusting and the oil can contaminate a stock finish.
The synthetic pads are the same as the green pot scrubber pads sold in grocery stores.
Most hardware stores sell them in various grit equivalents in the sand paper department and the grocery store pads work just as well.

Where this may work for whiting in the grain is that when the water is flashed to steam it also blasts sand dust and other contaminants out of the wood grain. It may also blow the whiting out.

To do a stock, just use a lightly wet sponge or rag to wet about 1/4 to 1/3 of the stock at a time and quickly dry it with the heat gun or stove burner.
Be careful not to scorch the wood on sharp edges.
When drying the wood you can actually see the moisture evaporating under the heat and turning to steam.

An additional benefit to whiskering the wood is that it cleans and opens the grain to better take the first coat of finish.
If whiskering doesn't get the whiting out, use a fine toothbrush and water to scrub the grain clean, then force dry it.

 

[Project355]

If that was a guitar body (ahem), I'd be hitting it with Naphtha, which won't harm a thing, or swell the wood

 

[Bwana John]

Vinegar is an easy way to dissolve calcium carbonate.

I don't know what it might do to wood

 

[Jackrabbit1957]

Try an old toothbrush with whatever solvent you're using.

 

[jmr40]

Open grain wood like walnut and oak need a wood grain filler applied to fill in the pores and get a smooth finish. I don't think it is necessary to get every bit of the the white out. The pore filler will cover it.

https://www.amazon.com/Old-Masters-...wood+filler&qid=1599516729&sr=8-7&tag=mh0b-20

 

[mrh477]

Thanks for all the replies, fellas. A couple things ended up doing the job. Raising the grain and whiskering the stock did seem to help get a decent amount of dust and crud out of it. And I did also note that some of what appeared to be white and powdery was maybe just very dry wood as beag_nut suggested. I've used a lot of acetone to clean this thing and that does tend to dry things out quite a bit.

The thing that really helped a lot ended up just being the right brush. I was previously trying to brush this thing off with a stiff-bristled nylon brush, like what you would use to clean a gun. Then I tried a natural bristle brush with thinner bristles. The nylon brush had bristles that were just too thick to get into the pores or even down into the bottom of the checkering, and the natural bristle brush was not stiff enough I think. So I found a bronze brush with very thin wire bristles, and that did the job. I am amazed at how much dust, dirt, and sanding grit came out of the pores! A lot more than I expected, and I'll now be going through this brushing process with every piece of open-pored wood I finish.

The brush I bought was just something I found at the hardware store but I did a little digging on the internet and Liberon actually makes a "liming brush" that is made to open the grain of open-pored woods. It's pretty expensive for a brush at $30 but maybe worth the investment since this process will become part of the standard operating procedure for finishing open-pored woods. There are also some similar brushes made for metal restoration that look pretty nice on restorationproduct.com.

As jmr40 stated, whatever grain filler or sealer used will probably cover a lot of the crap that's in the pores now (most of which was wood dust anyway) but I still like the idea of totally cleaning out the pores as much as possible so that they get filled with whatever I purposefully fill them with rather than a mixture of wood dust, dirt, sandpaper grit, etc. I'll be sanding in the first few coats of finish on this stock so I'll have to compare how the pores end up looking next to another stock I finished in the past without brushing out the pores well before finishing.

 

[beag_nut]

That latest pic looks pretty good.