Man that stock looks awsome. Outstanding work on it. The problems with cracks is that the lighter the stain the harder it is to disguise it.
If you use something like Brownells Acraglas you can tint the Acraglas when you fill in the crack. If you have fine sawdust left over from sanding you can mix it into the Acraglas so that it stains the same color as the stock. Always safely open the crack some and place something in it to hold it open while you coat both of the interior sides of the crack. Be sure to clamp the stock and leave any glue or Acraglas that gets squeezed out of the crack where it is. You can try to spread it out a little bit with your finger before clamping. You will wet sand off any excess glue. One tip that I figured out was to cut out a piece of plastic from a milk jug or somethinglike that and use it as a squeegee. Tilt the squeegee towards you as you go over the crack and try to leave a small mound of slurry over the crack. When you “wet” sand the stock with the oil or stain the small wood fibers in Acraglas will dye the same as the stock will. It will help blend everything in. If you don’t have an exact color match in your stain or oil coat don’t be scared to use dye to get the color that you want. I use dye all of the time to get the color or affect that I want. One cautionary point is that the dyes are highly concentrated. Many times you olny need a pin prick of stain to get the right color. You can’t take out color but you can add it to get darker so go slow. If the glue is tinted the same color as the stock you start to really get rid of the dark crack. Wet sanding the extra glue or Acraglas off again will help blend everything thing. If someone has tried an inept attempt to fix the crack get a dental pick and start getting as much of the old glue out of the crack before you try to do anything.
I am not a professional by any streach of the imagination. I have done quite a few stocks over the years and learned few things to help get a great finished product. You can’t really fully get rid of the crack line. You can open up the outside crack some and bevel the edges. Fill in the entire open parts and leave a puddle of the wet sand over the top to be sanded off once it is completely dry. Doing this spreads out the line of the crack and helps disguise the crack.
@19foxtrot- Kevin I have to give you the credit on the Gerstner chests. It really helps keep all of my expensive rifflers and files organized so finding the right one for a project is now very easy. Also it keeps them from hitting each other and sliding around when I open or close the drawer like they did before. Now I have more room and a lot more organized. In the second pic you can see how some of the stuff in my desk drawer used to be free to move around. I am going to post more pics of the chests in my other thread.
Kevin I am not trying to correct you or tell you how to do something. I am really trying to give information to the forum. Please don’t think that this is addressed totally to you. I learned a few things when I read you process. Hopefully between the two we can have some more forum members post up pics of their refinished stocks or other projects. I am going to add some pics of my chests and how I organized them in my other “do it yourself thread.”
