Interesting thread. I did more than 15 years with lots of experience finishing wood on high end products.

I recently bought an FX T12 that I bought via a picture on gun trader. I hate red colour wood finishes and saw this 'walnut' gun which was pleasant to my eye, very yellow and nice dark grain striping. It turned up and what I received was a horrible red, plain wood. I rang the gun shop and they said it's the same gun! Luckily for me I kept a copy of their pictures and emailed them. They then suddenly realised it was a picture of an old stock gun and had long gone.

Left with the option of sending it back or keeping it and refinishing, I didn't have a lot of choice really. My mate said send it back but it'd cost me £40 to get (postage and my RFD's fee) so sending it back and buying another would have been £15 to send back and another £40 for the next gun.

So now I've started refinishing my stock! It's a time consuming process removing the old finish. It took many hours of stripping with nitromors and that got me down to the red stained wood. I've just about finished sanding one side and it already looks 100 times nicer.

I'm actually going to spray my stock using my spray gun. I have light fast black which I'm going to pick out the grain with and then I'm going to do some shading too.