Flintlock pistol (wood stain?)

Oh, if the stock is made out of beech or birch, then you have to do something altogether different.

Gus

I believe those pedersoli kits are walnut... If that's the case I wouldn't stain it and would recommend a good finish like permalyn.

There was a fella that did an entire workup on a pedersoli pistol, personally not my thing but his turned out very nice once he fixed her up.

Believe it was Duelist Dave from the YouTube.

I never have neutralized the iron nitrate that you can purchase, honestly not entirely sure it's truly iron nitrate... If it is the concentration is very weak. However, Gus is absolutely right about neutralizing. I used to make my own solution, very easy to do and it's much stronger than the little brown bottles so neutralizing was a must.

If the kit was made in Italy, it may to probably is a walnut stock, though often very light colored european walnut.

This is a huge caution if you want to stain it darker and depends on the stain you use.  If you use something like the alkanet root dye stains, you just apply it over the wood and it works fine.  It won't stain it very dark, though.

However, many "spirit" or alcohol base stains, and many/most hardware store oil or water base stains can get you into real trouble and cause really blotchy areas on the forward and rear part of the grip, in particular.  This because there is so much end grain on those parts of the grip that really suck up the stain more than the regular grain of the rest of the wood.  So you MUST do an extra step with pistol stocks before you stain them.

If you do finish the wood with sandpaper, vacuum off or blow off all the dust with compressed air.  Thin down whatever varnish oil you are going to use as the finish to about half strength.  This means by volume, you use equal parts of the oil varnish and whatever is the reducer for it.  I use Tru Oil, so for a pistol stock, one teaspoon of the Oil mixed with one teaspoon of high grade alcohol (well stirred together) works great.   Rub this mixture hard into wood and once you go over the whole stock, go back and rub more into the areas that sucked the oil up the most, this so you have as even of a coat of this oil mixture on the stock as possible and well rubbed in.  Tru Oil is supposed to set up in 4 hours, but I leave this on overnight to thoroughly dry/cure.  Then use whatever was the last grit of sandpaper and sand the whole stock down to bare wood on the surface once more.  The finish seals the pores of the wood and especially the end grain parts, so your staining won't leave blotches.  

On most stains, you don't want to use them full strength, better to reduce the stain with two or three parts of whatever reducer is best for your stain and build the color up as you go.  I normally go over the whole stock as evenly as possible, then go back to the lighter areas to blend in additional coats of stain as needed.  Once you get the color even, let it dry at least 30 minutes for spirit (alcohol based) stains and longer periods for other stains as found on the container.  Then I rub the dickens out of it with an old terrycloth kitchen towel.  I take it outside in the sun to see if the color is even and dark as I want.  If not, I add more stain where needed and repeat the other steps.  Once that is done, I apply an even coat of oil finish and let it dry overnight inside.  The next day, I take it outside in the shade and allow it to cure all day.  If it is still a bit tacky, it goes outside for another day, but this time in the sun for two hours only on each side.  After that, I put full strength coats of Oil Varnish on the stock, as many as needed and that's normally three to 5 coats with Tru Oil. 

After each full strength coat dries, I lightly rub with the fine Grey Abrasive Pads from the Paint Sections of Hardware stores.  I STOPPED using steel wool for this shortly after these abrasive pads came into use, as they don't leave "steel hairs" in the finish you might not see until you build up the finish over them.  After the last coat of finish, I use either the Grey or White color abrasive pads to soften the shine as much as I want.  


BTW, years ago I bought a little paperback book on the way early American furniture was stained in the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries with original recipes for those stains.  I learned this tip to seal the pores before staining from that book of quotes, as no one in the period would accept different color pieces of wood that make up the furniture, especially the high status Mahoghany wood furniture of the 18th century.

Gus