Thread: Filling open grain on stock on the cheap

As you can see my poor old No.1 MkIII* has terrible open grain pores on the buttstock. Who knows what this thing has seen in the past.
As well as being ugly they are also open enough to catch facial hair when getting a cheek weld.
The gun was $70 so name of the game is low budget.
All I used was boiled linseed oil and some 400 grit sandpaper, method is as follows:
Coat in a stupidly thick layer of oil and let it go all sticky approx 24 hours.
Apply a fresh coat and start 'wet' sanding with a little square of the 400 grit sandpaper.
You'll see a bunch of black muck forming around the sandpaper edges, this is a mix of oil, wood dust and old finishes that were on the wood, and it's what is being used to fill the pores.
Sand until the paper is totally gums up, it stops sanding and acts more like a burnishing pad, and the stock will have a hazy finish and the pores should be visibly filled with the black muck.
Set aside to dry for another 24 hours.
After a quick wipe with a cloth I found the pores were only shallowly filled, I suppose the filling had shrunk while drying, so I repeated the process several times.
I'm a little concerned that future oiling may dissolve the filler material and remove it all over again but it seems pretty hard.