Stock Refinishing Question

[Hatfisher]

I have an older Sako Forester L579 .308 HB with a nice wood stock on it. The Rifle is bedded.I was wondering if I removed the stock and refinished it back to new type condition would I need to have the rifle re-bedded? Would it change the accuracy of the Rifle by Removing the stock with out doing anything with the bedding? I just want to sand and take out some dings in the stock. Most of the dings seem to be in the protective varnish coating on the stock and not in the stock itself. I can post pics if it would help.

[bigd]

Shouldn't be a problem, as long as you don't change how the barrelled action fits the bedding and fits the rest of the stock. Keep your sanding and refinishing on the outer part of the stock and have at 'er.

[Matt L.]

Show us what she looks like when your done!

[benamen]

A trick woodworkers use to get dings out of their products is to use a hot iron over a damp cloth over the ding. Swells the wood to get get some of the material back up. Might save some sanding.

[Hatfisher]

thanx for the tip. I might have to give it a go.

[FisherAlex]

x2 on the damp cloth and iron. Have use it lots on furniture and cabinets. As long as it's just a ding and not a gouge it should work. You want the cloth not driping wet, but not too dry, hold the iron on for 10-15 sec, make sure steam keeps coming up. Once it stops steaming, lift the iron, check to ding and re-apply if necessary. Good luck with it and show some pics when your done.

[Dean2]

Great tip on steaming out dents, works great on oil finnished stocks. If stock is plastic finnish, urethane, some types of varnish or other stuff that will melt be very careful, heat can make a big mess. If the dent goes through to the wood, use a gentle type of remover/stripper if you want to remove all of the finnish and start from fresh. If you want to spot fix, sand a small area of the plastic or varnish, steam out the dent, re-apply finnish of the same type as original.

If the existing dents are just in the finnish as you indicated, and there aren't too many, you could try spot refinnishing, though strip and redo usually produces a nicer job if there are more than a few dings.

Working on the exterior of the stock should not affect accurracy, bedding etc. There are some great artricles on stoch refinnishing available on Brownell's site and by Googling "Gunstock Refinnishing".