purpose of Birchwood Casey sealer & filler

[wpshooter]

What is the purpose of the product that Birchwood Casey offers that they refer to as stock sealer & filler ?

Doesn't this do the same thing as the Tru-Oil product that they offer or is there something that it accomplishes that the Tru-Oil does not ?

Thanks.

[Helix_FR]

Its a pre treatment for Tru Oil. Some stocks have a more open grain that soaks in Tru oil so the first several layers are uneven. Sealer fills those grains so no so many layers of tru oil are needed and the finish remains even.

[wpshooter]

Originally Posted by Helix_FR

Its a pre treatment for Tru Oil. Some stocks have a more open grain that soaks in Tru oil so the first several layers are uneven. Sealer fills those grains so no so many layers of tru oil are needed and the finish remains even.

Thanks for your reply.

Can't this same thing be accomplished by very fine sanding ?

Thanks.

[Bindernut]

It depends on the type of wood you're working with.
An open-grained wood (oak as an extreme example) will drink up a lot of oil before it is full. A tight-grain wood (maple, birch, etc) will use less.
Sanding will knock down the high spots of the grain, but it won't fill in the open pores. You need something to fill in those voids.

Most walnuts are a fairly open grain as well and can stand to use a good fill/seal job, Otherwise, you'll need quite a bit more oil and you will likely see the open grain on the surface of the finished piece.



Me, I don't believe in using an extra filler/sealer.
I like to use the process that I linked to in post #6 of your thread about Tru-Oil vs Tung Oil thread a couple weeks ago.
Basically you're wet-sanding the wood using the oil finish...in effect creating your our filler/sealer using the sanding dust from the piece of wood that you're working on. Absolutely no worries about color matching that way.

[Bindernut]

Snapped a few pictures of some oil finished stocks that I've got handy.

1. A Swedish Mauser hardwood stock (some variant of birch if I remember right).
This was just sanded down to 400grit. Stained with a medium dark walnut oil stain since it is a fairly white wood) and sealed with three or four coats of natural color Watco Danish Oil finish. You can see the raised grain clearly on this stock. Actually, I left it that way on purpose...it gives a nice non-slip grip on the entire stock but yes it does look very unfinished.

2. A hand-rubbed oil finish on a piece of American Walnut.
This is on a rifle that I bought a few years back so I don't know the exact finish details on it. You can clearly see the open pores (the small dark streak areas) that aren't filled in but the surface of the wood has a nice satin finish. I'm guessing that it was several coats of oil (unknown brand/type) that was knocked down with steel wool between coats. It looks roughly like 000 steelwool gloss to my eyeball. I did apply a coat of furniture paste wax to this rifle to seal up the wood...that also gives it a slight sheen.

3. This is a piece of either Black Walnut or European Walnut that I did a couple years ago with natural color Watco Danish Oil.
I'm not sure exactly what the variety is...it was a semi-finished inletted blank when I traded for it at a gun show.
It is slightly tighter grained than the one in pic #2 so the pores aren't quite as open. This was finish sanded to 400grit dry. Then I applied oil and wet-sanded to 600-grit to fill in the grain. I did two 600-grit wetsand coats on this stock. After that dried, I wet-sanded to 800-grit and allowed to dry. Final rub was with 0000 steelwool and oil to take the slight bit of sheen off of the finish. It was finish sealed with Watco's Satin Wax which also brings back the final sheen a bit.