I'm breaking the long guns down outside today and going back over them more carefully- cleaning the metal with Hoppes, cleaning the wood with boiled linseed oil and turpentine mixed about 3:1 or so. I'll scrub the checkering, etc, then wipe clean, and BLO the wood stocks on the inside. Let them sit and absorb the oil, and wipe them dry, and reinstall them.
Neat thing I learned about AK stocks: the Russians used pine tar on their stocks (so did the Finns) and it makes wood last damn near forever. Mix pine tar, BLO, and some turpentine together for a killer wood treatment and preservative. It will keep it from drying out and turning gray, and make it last almost forever. I just ordered a 3-liter can of dark pine tar, otherwise known as kiln-burnt pine tar. The dark is an even better preservative than the regular pine tar, but is more expensive. It's $45 for 3 liters of dark vs $45 for 5 liters of light, $1995.00 for 55 gal drum of light. But a deck that someone has a lot of time into, a lot of pride, it's an investment. A person could make a fortune just putting wood preservative on peoples decks and patios- you could guarantee it forever practically.
The wood that's sometimes found from Viking days- that's been preserved with pine tar. It's been around for centuries. Flag poles used to be treated with it, to strengthen them and make them last. Dozens of uses. The best stuff is the Swedish pine tar- accept no substitute- they're the ones that's been making it forever, and is the most highly regarded pine tar available.
And I'm experimenting with shellac, refinishing cheap Romanian AK stocks. They're generally laminated birch, so after it's stripped it's nice and white to accept whatever you want to stain or color it with. My wife asked me to refinish a wooden wastebasket top and so I did it in AK iodine red, like the stocks above.
Shellac is awesome to work with. It dries fast, although it isn't fully cured for a week. It can be layered, each coats dissolves into the one applied before it. If you mess up, brush it with denatured alcohol- it will re-dissolve and flatten out into a nice shine. Fuck-up proof. If you really fuck it up, wait a week or so, and wet-sand it for a piano finish.
And the way all this stuff makes my garage and work place smell- it's so earthy and strong, each scent has it's own character, but they belong together- boiled linseed oil pine tar, turpentine, and shellac.