The rifle is 1975 built, from the single batch of Standard M94 Carbines in .44/40WIN, that Winchester built exclusively for the Oz market in that year. The woodwork was a bit battered when it came into my hands back in the late 90s; the metalwork and bore looked very good or better, so I snapped it up - as you do.
I was quite chuffed with the way it came up; there was actually quite nice timber underneath Winshitter's 'brown crud' varnish/stain finish...
1. Buttstock and fore-end removed from rifle, buttplate removed, and OEM varnish/stain finish stripped with Methylene Chloride based stripper – Selleys Kwik Strip IIRC – and Jex steel wool pads.
2. Dents/dings steamed out, using water wetted, folded to ~3mm thickness cotton cloth pad and an old clothes iron – one with a thick aluminium soleplate, as that holds heat really well. Some of the deeper ones took quite a few rounds of steaming.
3. Wetted stock with water [metho also works for this], allowed to dry, and 'de-whiskered' with 0000 fine steel wool.
I didn't do any overall sanding at all, as the few dents which wouldn't steam out completely were only small, but deepish. Didn't want to remove the amount of wood I'd have had to take off, to eliminate them.
I did relocate the rear sling swivel base; and to cover up the old hole, made a small curved square filler plate from sheet brass, carefully inletted it, and glued it in place with Acraglas epoxy. Then sanded the plate flush with the wood.
4. Multiple hand-rubbed coats of straight Birchwood Casey Tru-Oil, until the wood pores were filled a bit.
Can't recall just how many coats it took to get to this point, as this job was some time ago! I've still got the same 16oz bottle of Tru-Oil I bought for this job back when, and it's about ¾ full still.
BTW, in this case, the 'hand-rubbing' technique actually involves hard rubbing, i.e. applying enough pressure so that the wood starts to feel warm to the touch.
5. Final rubdown was with 0000 steel wool dampened with Tru-Oil, to take off the gloss and leave a 'satin' final finish; then final wipe-off using a cotton cloth, and allowed to dry.
NB: Be very careful about disposal of any piece of paper, cloth, or steel wool, that has any 'drying oil', like Tru-oil, tung oil or BLO, on it. Best way is to burn them, straight after use. Or at the very least, put them in a metal container, away from anything combustible.
The reason for this is, that these materials can spontaneously combust, from the 'heat of drying' of the oil on them - and this event has been known to start serious workshop fires.
Teaser: full length pic, RHS view
Close-ups:
