Friend of mine sent me his factory WASR furniture to be refinished, ended up more of a chore than expected.

As most of you probably know, the blonde colored beech furniture is fairly lousy, and beech is a difficult wood to stain evenly - especially if you want a dark stain.

I started with a gel stripper, after one coat the majority of finish was gone. After 3, 4, 5 coats there was still about the same amount of finish remaining, stubbornly sticking to the dense parts of the grain on the butt. After washing and buffing with mineral spirits and steel wool I lightly sanded with 220 grit sandpaper. That got all of it off. The butt was noticeably blonder than the handguards, despite all the furniture receiving the same prep.



This is where things got tricky. I knew the beech would give me trouble with staining so I applied a coat of wood conditioner. I had been asked to do a "dark red" finish so I knew I had my work cut out for me. I let the wood conditioner set for 15 mins as instructed, then used Chestnut Ridge military stock stain, which is alcohol based. This stain is more suited for walnut, being a rich, dark red color. I cut the stain roughly 50:50 with rubbing alcohol to try and stave off blotching then set to work. The first coats went well but were very light. Doing my best to blend dark and light areas I ended up applying about 4 coats of my alcohol/stain mix. This is when the blotching started to really show up.

I kept moving forward hoping the next step would even things out. Again, cutting 50:50 with alcohol I started to apply coats of Rit Scarlet red dye. This expectedly gave a much richer red color and helped even out the stain to a degree. The grain pattern was very irregular especially on the right side of the butt so it only evened out so much. After the dye dried, being careful to wipe off excess before it crystallized on the surface, the color was still quite uneven. Dense grain areas were a very nice, dark color but less dense areas were more bright red. At this point I broke out a true black stain and blended the color as much as possible.



After drying I applied 3 coats of pure tung oil, then 2 coats of Formby's "low gloss" tung oil finish. I don't really care for the Formby's for most projects but it does provide a fairly durable hard finish that can easily be left glossy or dulled with steel wool. I'd never use it on a C&R type gun but I had been requested to provide a durable, lacquer type finish. Had I more time I would have kept up with PTO for 10-15 coats until a more natural oil finish had built up.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the results considering I was trying to put a dark finish into a wood that doesn't like to take dark stains evenly. The handguards came out much better than the butt in my opinion. In hindsight I could have tried multiple coats of wood conditioner in the beginning or simply used a lighter stain. Since the Rit seemed to apply much more evenly, I'm also wondering if a mix of a dark brown or black and red dye would have resulted in a more even color and skipped the stain altogether. A gel stain also would have likely yielded better results. In the end, I was fighting to produce a very even color on pieces of wood that had a lot of grain variation and I feel only so much can be done.

It came out awesome.  Thanks for posting this.

No problem. Shipped it off and got some pics of it assembled on my buddy's WASR.