[A. G. Maisey]

Boiled linseed dries more quickly, true, but raw oil seems to be a better filler, a lot slower to dry, sometimes finishes up a bit tacky --- which is not really a problem --- but the finished job, and I'm talking two years, not two weeks, looks pretty much the same. When I say that "tacky" is not a problem, I mean it can be easily fixed, it is not something that you need to live with.

The mildew problem is a characteristic of linseed finished wood. Yes, overall damp conditions certainly do generate mildew, but in premises which are not subject to a moist environment, a poorly maintained linseed finished gunstock can still produce mildew. I used to know of a lot of recipes for a hand-rubbed oil finish, and they can contain tung oil, mineral turps, gum turps, vinegar --- and other stuff I've forgotten. The preparation stage can get a bit mystical for some people. I've known people to use stuff like egg-white in the prep stage, and a lot of people swear by lemon juice and isopropyl alcohol in the prep, rather than steam whiskering.

The main thing with a hand rubbed oil finish is the way it is done, thorough preparation, warm wood, warm oil, tiny quantities of oil, completely dry between coats, rub back with 0000 steel wool between coats, spread the job over months, not days, buff the finish, wax over the oil finish. Some people prefer to use a cloth or hessian pad, others prefer no pad, others just use bare hand, you can generate more heat with a pad, and heat helps both drying and penetration.

I did a lot of stock work in my late teens and twenties, and have continued with spasmodic bouts of playing with firearm wood since then. I was taught how to do a hand rubbed finish by somebody who had a very solid background in this art, using boiled oil, what I was told was " a coat a day for a week, a coat a week for a month, a coat a month for a year, a coat a year forever" . I don't know that we can take that literally, but it is certainly the idea behind a decent hand rubbed finish. The thing with any oil finish is that it penetrates the wood, it doesn't sit on top of the wood like shellac, it goes into the wood and bonds with it, this means that if you have dings and dents in your stock it is a whole lot easier to get them out and bring the finish back than it ever is with something that just sits on top of the wood.

Oil finishes are never just a matter of slapping a bit of oil onto something, it is an art, and there are a number of ways to do the job. About 20 years ago there was a good article on oil finishing in one of the gun journals, I forget which one, but it was most likely Gun Digest because that's the only one I regularly buy.