I picked up a WASR-10 a few weeks ago at the Oaks Gun Show in Pennsylvania and decided to refinish the Romanian wood furniture that came with the rifle. The goal was to get nice Russian Red finish with a glossy polyurethane coat. After I refinish it I am going to get started on widening the magazine well to accept double stack magazines…

But first things first… Here’s the new addition to the family.

The wood isn’t particularly beautiful. Like most imported AK furniture, the stock and hand guards are all laminate. Yea, its cheap, but the grain is pretty nice and there aren’t any large dings or gouges, so I decided to refinish instead of replacing the stock.

As you can see, the butt stock is pretty standard. Shows lots of finish wear and dirt, but nothing a little cleaning won’t fix. However the lower hand guard (shown below) shows significantly more wear.

The lower hand guard’s lingering red finish has me a little nervous, but the acetone, bleaching, and sanding should do the trick. Anything that will be left over will be hidden by the multiple layers of stain.

Anyone who has bought one of these “cheap” AKs knows that it can be really difficult to remove the rifle’s furniture. The lower hand guard was the easiest to remove. It slid right out. The upper hand guard was significantly harder. It’s hard to see in the picture above, but it is slightly misshaped. After removing the gas system, I needed a vice to finally remove the upper hand guard. I am going to take extra care not to add any stain to the edges of the hand guards because it is already a really snug fit.

I was woefully unprepared for just how hard removing the rifle’s butt stock would be. Once you field strip the rifle and remove the screws connecting the stock to the receiver, the next step (advocated by many on the internet) is to use a screwdriver as a wedge to loosen the stock. While I didn’t personally take a picture of this step, here’s a stock picture of what I am talking about.

So the recommended approach is to insert the screwdriver into the hole on the right, in between the front of the stock and the receiver. I started using the screwdriver, but it was marring the wood. While few people, if any, will ever see the front of the stock, it didn’t sit right with me to gouge the wood. That left me with the only alternative: repeatedly smack the stock until it loosens up.

After whacking the stock with a rubber mallet, it eventually wiggled out enough to be able to be pulled out manually. I found that it worked best to hold the rifle in my lap and strike it at a 45° angle. Be sure to strike the stock at the rear along it’s pivot points. Eventually the stock will move enough to be removed. I have the feeling that these stocks were inserted into the receivers when they were still wet from finishing, because it was an ungodly tight fit. Like the hand guards, I am going to add painters tape to the end of the stock when I begin adding the stain and polyurethane because I don’t think it would fit into the receiver if it was even a micrometer thicker. In fact, I might even try to shave off a tiny bit to make the fit a little more manageable.

Here is a picture of all of the furniture removed. On a side note, I was legitimately surprised to find a cleaning kit when I removed the metal butt plate from the stock. I had no idea there would be one in there, so it was a very pleasant surprise. Unfortunately, it was caked in Cosmoline (thanks Century International for the thorough cleaning!). Also it seems that the cleaning kit does not match the rifle, or at least the cleaning rod doesn’t match the brush. I will probably ditch the cleaning kit and replace it with a nicer one.

So while the furniture has significant finish wear, it is still a good idea to bathe the stock and hand guards in acetone. The acetone did a good job of removing most of the excess red finish and did an exceptional job removing the Cosmoline from inside the butt stock.

They say that this acetone bath is best done in an ammo can. I couldn’t bring myself to use either of my ammo cans because the finish was chipping and I didn’t want to strip the rest of the finish. So I used a little plastic container and tilted it in order to submerge each piece of wood. I seriously underestimated how much acetone I would need, which became apparent when it started evaporating. So I dipped steel wool in the acetone and rubbed the furniture to try and get the best bang for my buck before the acetone evaporated.

I pulled the furniture out after about 30 minutes. If I had an air tight container, I would have let it sit overnight, but after 30 minutes most of the acetone had already evaporated. I rinsed the wood off with the hose and brought it inside for a light sanding.

Above is a picture of the furniture after it dried from its acetone bath. I forgot to take a close-up picture after the acetone bath, but you can see that it removed a good amount of the finish. For whatever reason, the lower hand guard was stubborn, but the red stain went away after some light sanding. As you can see, I reassembled the rest of the rifle because I was worried that I would end up losing one of the pieces.

After sanding it down a little and letting the wood dry overnight, I got ready to bleach the wood the following morning. Since I have a backyard pool, I was lucky to have all of the ingredients on hand. Other tutorials suggest using regular household bleach to lighten the furniture. Obviously this approach will get the job done, but I strongly advise that you do not use laundry bleach if you can avoid it. Brands like Chlorox contain other chemicals that can adversely affect wood. Even though my AK’s furniture isn’t particularly expensive or collectable, I instead chose to use concentrated industrial liquid bleach. My father has always been looking for cheaper ways to chlorinate our pool, and he finally stumbled upon a store that sells concentrated bleach in blue 5 gallon jugs.

I rinsed out a bucket and added the water. Other tutorials suggest a 1:3 chlorine-to-water ratio. Since this chlorine was highly concentrated, I used a 1:4 ratio. I was lucky to find a bucket with a diameter just slightly smaller than the length of the butt stock. This allowed me to wedge the stock in and keep it submerged without having to hold it down. The upper hand guard (made from a different wood) was significantly more buoyant and floated at the top. The lower hand guard was a much denser wood and quickly sank to the bottom

Below is the picture of the bleaching process, with my dog casually posing alongside the bucket.

I left the wood soaking in the solution, with the plan to pull the furniture out after an hour or so and check on it. Since the chlorine is more concentrated than what others use, I would rather be safe than sorry.

—-2 Hours Later—-

Well, I took the wood furniture out of the chlorine solution. I left it in a little longer than I originally planned to (lost track of time), but I think that the extra time did it some good.

I think that the bleach did a good job at getting rid of the grime left behind by the acetone bath and lightening up the wood significantly. I am also happy that while the wood was lightened, the grain was left pretty prominent.

—A Few Hours Later—

I sat the wood furniture outside in a little bit of sun in order for the pieces to dry quicker. I am not a very patient person. I only arrived at the decision to sit them in the son after I became bored with holding the hair dryer… When I was confident that the wood had completely dried, I started the process of sanding the wood.

Now, I don’t have any pictures of this process because, quite frankly, it wasn’t very exciting. I went into this whole project with the understanding that while I would love to have an absolutely pristine AK-47, I am working with imperfect laminate wood furniture. It almost seems like it was requisite part of the manufacturing process to drag each WASR-10 stock down a Romanian gravel road before export. More often than not, if you are refinishing the wood on an AK you just bought, you’re doing so because the wood looks horrible. If you go into the project understanding that your piece of wood will be imperfect, you’ll save yourself a lot of angst.

So I only sanded enough to get the furniture smooth and make me confident that it would take a stain. If I wanted to be a perfectionist, I could have used wood putty to fill in some of the gouges. But that would mean more time and money. Not really feeling it. I also found that as I sanded it down, I found myself sanding below the metal rivets that reinforce the wood. I don’t think that these laminate stocks were really made with the intention of being sanded down and restored. So just be careful not to sand too much away, just enough to make it smooth and take the stain. Once you sand it, that wood can’t be put back.

With the wood sanded down to my liking, I decided to start the process of staining the furniture. But before I did anything, I went to my laptop to get some easy listening music. Even though this WASR-10 is Romanian, it was still made within the USSR. So it wouldn’t be the same without some music from the good-old Red Army Choir. I found an hour-long playlist of soviet songs and I am not going to lie, it made the project a lot more fun. But I digress…

These are the supplies that I used in the next step of staining and sealing the wood. A sponge brush (reserved for the stain), Minwax Semi-Gloss polyurethane, Minwax Red Oak stain, and Scarlet Rit dye.

After seeing other tutorials online, I decided to use scarlet Rit dye as the base stain. Others use the Wine colored dye, but that looked to be a little too purple for my liking… I’ve seen lots of ways to do this, including tutorials on using the the power/crystal Rit dyes. I decided to apply multiple layers of the liquid dye to the wood and letting it dry before I added the stain.

Dyeing the stock was by far the easiest process. Make sure you have some type of clamp to hold the wood off of the ground. The clamp becomes especially important later when adding the polyurethane, but at these early stages it helps keep the mess a little contained and keeps your hands relatively clean.

I knew that the hand grips were going to be more difficult since I didn’t have a clamp small enough to attach to either piece. I’ve seen this process in other tutorials and I decided to use it. Basically, I folded a manila envelope and taped it so that it would stand up. Obviously, the optimal positioning for drying would be for the pieces to be vertical, but this seemed to work for me.

I applied a very liberal helping of Rit dye that probably wasn’t necessary. I would apply the dye onto the wood with a paper towel (in order to save my $.88 sponge brush for later) and then immediately wipe away any excess dye to stop it from hardening and making the process more complicated.

I think I did this wipe-on, wipe-off step about 3-4 times over the course of an hour or so. The goal is just to get the wood to soak up the dye before applying the stain. When you finish the last coat of the Rit dye, be sure to wipe the wood clean of excess liquid and sit it out for a bit to dry. No set time for you to wait, it will depend on humidity, air flow, temperature, etc. I set the wood pieces under a fan and in about an hour, they seemed dry enough to move to the next step.

Here’s what the stock and hand guards look like after being dyed.

Also as a side-note: plan accordingly and recognize that no matter what you do, this will be a messy project. Exhibit A:

So the next step is to add the Minwax Red Oak stain. I chose Red Oak because it sounded like it would work. I’ve heard other people swear by different stains. Just be sure to look at the samples available at Home Depot or Loew’s and remember that those samples show what it looks like if the stain is applied to a normal piece of wood. The way I did it, the stain is being applied over an already red piece of wood. So I used my best judgement and picked the Red Oak.

Since most of the color is coming from the Rit dye, the main purposes of the stain are to slightly darken the color, to seal the wood a bit, and to make the grain “pop” more. How many coats you apply really will depend on whether you are satisfied with the color. Just remember that you might need to add a different amount of stain to the hand guards since they are rarely from the same piece of wood as the butt stock.

As I mentioned, be sure to use a clamp on the butt stock, it makes the process a lot easier.

This picture above is after just a couple applications of the Red Oak stain. Notice how even just one or two coats of stain can darken the wood significantly and make the grain pop a lot more. Once I got to this shade, I was happy with the color.

Now here is where I hit a bit of a road bump. I knew that I couldn’t even think about adding the polyurethane until the dye and stain completely had dried and set in.

For whatever reason, whether it was the hot temperature or the high humidity or just me rushing this entire process, after letting the wood sit overnight, I realized that it was actually sweating out the Scarlet dye I had applied first. To combat this, I would gently wipe down the furniture every half-hour or so to remove the excess dye/stain.

After repeating this all day and letting the furniture sit beneath a ceiling fan over night, I finally awoke to find the stain completely dried. After 3-4 coats of Rit dye and a few coats of Red Oak stain, this is what the wood furniture looked like…

Call it beginner’s luck, but this was exactly the color I was looking for. So suffice it to say, I was pretty happy with myself…

The next step required me to add the layers of Polyurethane. Now obviously, polyurethane wouldn’t have been found on an AK-47 leaving the factory. I’ve read that the Russians used Tung Oil to finish Mosin Nagant, SKS, and AK-47 stocks. Others suggest using Linseed Oil for a semi-authentic look. I chose to use polyurethane because I have worked with it before and the process sounded much quicker and easier. So for this process, you need another sponge brush, semi-gloss polyurethane, steel wool to buff out the polyurethane, and a tack cloth to remove any lint or dust.

I decided to start the polyurethane application on the hand guards since I anticipated that the butt stock (standing up vertically) would dry quicker. Below you can see what just one coat of polyurethane (to the lower hand guard) can do.

I was extremely nervous to add polyurethane to the under part of the hand guards (the surfaces touching the barrel and gas tube). Since no one will ever see it and the under part is subjected to such hot temperatures, I opted not to add polyurethane to the under belly of the hand guards (just the outside, visible portions). A quick Google search found unsubstantiated cases where the heat of the barrel actually caused the polyurethane under the hand guards to start smoking. Not really something I wanted to deal with…

After adding a thin, even coat of the poly to the hand guards, I moved on to the butt stock. Polyurethane tends to run a bit after it is applied. I decided to apply the coat with the stock standing up, that way the polyurethane would run with the grain of the laminate wood and possibly make it a little harder to spot imperfections…

Here’s the stock after the first coat had dried…

Once the first coat of polyurethane has dried, the number of subsequent coats you apply will depend on your taste and how perfect you want the wood to look. I decided only to apply 3 coats of polyurethane. After each coat dried, I rubbed the furniture down with a tack rag (not entirely sure if that was necessary) and on the second to last coat, I gently buffed the wood with #0000 steel wool. This will get rid of any significant runs or imperfections in the finish. Be sure to carefully and evenly apply the final coat of polyurethane to limit the number of runs.

With my 3 coats dried, this is what my stock looked like…

With the wood furniture refinished, the next step is to reattach the stock and hand guards to the rifle. But if your AK was anything like mine, removing the wood was an absolute pain. I took this opportunity to sand the end of the butt stock a tiny bit in order to make it a little easier to remove it in the future. Regardless, this is also a good idea in case you got a little polyurethane or an abundance of stain on this part of the stock.

After a few whacks with the rubber mallet, the wood furniture was reattached to the gun and I finally got to see the fruits of my labor.

To save you the time of scrolling up to compare it to what it originally looked like, here’s the side-by-side, before and after shots.

This process was a lot of fun. While I originally considered just buying new, already finished furniture for the gun, I am really glad that I put the time into doing it myself. It definitely adds a pride factor to the gun, and for that, it’s priceless to me.

Also, for fun I went back to the Gun Show that I bought it at and I received numerous offers to buy the WASR. One person even offered $250 over what I originally paid for it. If my M.A. degree doesn’t pan out, at least I’ll know I can make a few bucks by refinishing some AK beaters.

I also got a great deal on a holographic sight with an attached laser. I was going to put it on my AR-15, but I think it looks so much more bad-ass/ridiculous on the WASR.

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