brentona
Well-Known Member
I came into possession of an Arsenal SLR 95 not too long ago. It was blacked out and fine. But I thought it could be better, different, mine. Enter, the rifle:
I decided I would get a nice Ironwood Designs stock set. However, their pre-finished sets were out of stock for this model. The project began.
I wanted to do a 100% shellac finishing and decided, the hell with it, I’ll make my own.
2.5# of this guy and a gallon of denatured alcohol will make my base, amber shellac.
This 2.5# cut yielded 5 quarts of pure amber shellac. I kept 1 qt amber and progressively stepped up a percentage of “Reddish Brown” Transtint to each quart. I will refer to them in percentages. 0 being amber, whole meaning 1 ounce of Transtint for a quart.
Here is the bare wood with two coats of plain amber.
In this picture, you see the shade change as I added a coat of quarter value and a coat of half value. Buffing with 0000 steel wool in between.
One more coat of half value and two coats of three quarter here. Starting to look a little better.
Three coats of whole value tinted shellac and a realization: I am going to keep my ultimak up top and abandon the top fore end wood. In order to do this, I had to inlet the sides of the bottom wood, and remove a fair amount of stock to accommodate the mounting brackets that tie in with the ultimak gas / rail system.
This is the difference of one versus three coats of full value tint. Shellac is an awesome layering finish.
All of these previous pictures were taken with a cell phone. It’s only right that the final product be done with a real camera.
And that’s it. I now have roughly the same amount of shellac as I began with. A little bit goes a long long way. All in all, it was a great project. The quality of the furniture is fantastic. I highly recommend Ironwood Designs if you’re in the mood for some organic material to replace your injection molded plastic. Give the unfinished product a try. It’s a great project.
It should be mentioned that this is my first time finishing any sort or stock, in this case, an AKM. Don’t be nervous. Read some info online and go for it.
-Brent
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I decided I would get a nice Ironwood Designs stock set. However, their pre-finished sets were out of stock for this model. The project began.
I wanted to do a 100% shellac finishing and decided, the hell with it, I’ll make my own.
2.5# of this guy and a gallon of denatured alcohol will make my base, amber shellac.
This 2.5# cut yielded 5 quarts of pure amber shellac. I kept 1 qt amber and progressively stepped up a percentage of “Reddish Brown” Transtint to each quart. I will refer to them in percentages. 0 being amber, whole meaning 1 ounce of Transtint for a quart.
Here is the bare wood with two coats of plain amber.
In this picture, you see the shade change as I added a coat of quarter value and a coat of half value. Buffing with 0000 steel wool in between.
One more coat of half value and two coats of three quarter here. Starting to look a little better.
Three coats of whole value tinted shellac and a realization: I am going to keep my ultimak up top and abandon the top fore end wood. In order to do this, I had to inlet the sides of the bottom wood, and remove a fair amount of stock to accommodate the mounting brackets that tie in with the ultimak gas / rail system.
This is the difference of one versus three coats of full value tint. Shellac is an awesome layering finish.
All of these previous pictures were taken with a cell phone. It’s only right that the final product be done with a real camera.
And that’s it. I now have roughly the same amount of shellac as I began with. A little bit goes a long long way. All in all, it was a great project. The quality of the furniture is fantastic. I highly recommend Ironwood Designs if you’re in the mood for some organic material to replace your injection molded plastic. Give the unfinished product a try. It’s a great project.
It should be mentioned that this is my first time finishing any sort or stock, in this case, an AKM. Don’t be nervous. Read some info online and go for it.
-Brent
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
