Zoli Zouave Musket Refurb pt 2, Wood refinishing

After some consultation the lock is pretty well a write off, the tumbler was hardened with a blow torch and a poor understanding of metallurgy it seems, the points were too hard, the body not hardened at all so it tore itself apart, the nose of the seer is having the same problem, so It looks like i'll be ordering new parts all around for the lock, I'm thinking I might send the lock plate off to get re colour case hardened too, as the color on it now sucks.
the wood work came along pretty well though

Stripping off the old finish went pretty well, I use Circa 1850 furniture stripper, I find it does an excellent job peeling off what ever gunk that got applied to these guns, this had a glossy hard coat on it that took some time for the stripper to chew threw but once it got through that it ate down to the wood really well. You can see the finish starting to peel off in the photo here, it took 2 coats of the stripper to have it down to the bare wood.

After the stripper is cleaned off I give the stock a wipe down with acetone to pull out any oils that are still in the wood, this will also finish off any tiny bits of finish that are still lingering. The wood is a white wood, i'd say a beech from the way the grain pattern on the bottom of the stock, the orig Zouaves had a walnut stock with a oil finish giving them the nice rifle red color you see on older guns, its going to be hard to match with this wood but i'll give it hell

First coat of stain applied, im using minwax special walnut as a base color, the grain is showing and the beech doesn't like to take stain well, my next project im going to try using alcohol dyes instead of stain.

After the special walnut I applied 2 coats of red mahogany to get that nice rifle red, and after that one more coat of special walnut to cut back on the redness of the stain

There it is, after its all stained and dried, its ready not for a multi coat oil finish, I'll be using a boiled linseed oil finish, first 2 coats I used a 50/50 mix of blo and turpentine, helps the oil to penetrate into the wood better, then i'll use 2 coats of 75/25 blo to turpentine, then 3-6 thin coats of just blo, i'll go until im happy with the semi gloss finish that I get out of the blo, sometimes i'll use tung oil instead of the blo, its a lighter oil and it penetrates hard woods well, it also doesn't have the problem of getting a hazy in damp conditions, its got a nicer smell too but where this musket was done in blo originally i'll go that route this time.