The Finish is in sight.

With the terrible finish stripped off, the wood on the Mosin is actually in very good shape.  I used my iron and a rag to steam out the few dents that were there.  I've got my wood stripped, sanded, clean, and ready for stain.

As I mentioned previously, I don't like wood.  I also don't like the color brown.  It's my least favorite color.  That left me with a problem since these guns come with brown wood stocks.  I couldn't go with red either, because I'm colorblind and unless it's a bright red, it looks brown to me, which I don't like.  I considered bleaching the wood to a light blond, but it's discolored enough that I wasn't sure how well it would bleach.  So I decided to go dark.  Ebony dark.  I used a Min-Wax oil-based stain.  I chose oil based because this stock will still weep cosmoline for years to come and it shouldn't affect an oil based stain. Only after starting to stain did I discover that Min-Wax has a reputation as the worst stain on the market.  Consequently, my stock is dark brown instead of black.  If I were to do it again, I'd use a better brand.  It's a bit lighter in the pic than real life because of the flash.

To finish my finish, I chose Birchwood-Casey's Tru-oil.  It's mostly boiled linseed oil with some other additives, and is about the most popular gun stock finish on the planet.  It takes a day or so to dry well enough to sand and over the course of a month or so, I did the oil, let dry, sand, repeat routine.  This fills the grain, leaving a nice smooth surface.

After many many coats of Tru-Oil, I decided that I had enough build up(since most of it got sanded off between coats it's not very thick).  I did my final sanding wet with 1500 grit paper, then polished with regular automotive polishing compound.  The Tru-Oil buffs up very easily.  I know what you're thinking, battle rifles shouldn't be shiny.  But you know who's rifle this is?  Mine.  :)