This question may not exactly fit in with some of the other questions in this section, but I value the expertise of the forum members and knowledge they have on working with woods.
I am refinishing a Rem BDL stock from the 70's. It has been redone once before using tru-oil I believe. Anyway, the last person to redo this did a poor part of sanding before the finish, so I am stripping and sanding and refinishing.
Here is my question. I used Formby's stripper to get most of the old stain and finish off. I finished up by using the old wet towel and iron to steam out the dents and remaining crud. When I used the stripper, it got on the fore end tip which is some kind of ebony wood or black plastic and really made it bubble up. Is there any method of polishing this back to the original sheen that it used to have?

I suspect you're dealing with black plastic because stripper shouldn't cause ebony to bubble. The only practical solution I have is to make a small slit in the bubble and dribble some glue in. Clamp it until the glue has dried. I have used that technique for many years on antique furniture that's veneered with lifting problems with good results.
jim

Another technique is to just sand the fore end tip down when you sand the wood until it's smooth.
Use a fine grit sand paper on the plastic so you don't reduce too much and sand easy so you don't heat the plastic and melt it.

Once it's smooth and the wood is final sanded, finish it how you want.
Once it's completely finished wrap tape around the wood to protect it and use finer and finer sand paper on the plastic until you can use a plastic polish to restore the level of shine you want.

You can buy plastic polishes at automotive stores where they sell it for polishing headlight lenses.

If it was me and the fore end is indeed plastic I would replace it with some real ebony. It might be some work but would be worth it in the end.

Probably just bubbled up the old orig Remington finish on the plastic part. They used some tough epoxy stuff as stock finishes.
Maybe the orig refinish had the tip masked off because it was plastic and they stayed off of it. Your Homer stripper cut it a little and lifted it some causing the bubbles, ect.

Just sand it right off as advised already. You are going to sand the wood anyway I suspect.
Block sand the forend right out to avoid any bump forming betw to two materials.
Go right down to 600 or even 800/100 on the plastic tip. No real need to go that far on the wood itself all over unless you realy want to,
The finer you go on the plastic tip, the easier it is to then polish it out to a final high gloss that you are after.
Just like any high gloss finish, it is finer and finer scratches is what you are seeing,,or better,,not seeing.
From 800 or 1000 grit you can go to 0000 steel wool,,then to a polishing compound like simichrome.
That'll get you pretty much to a mirror finish w/o much of an investment in specialized polishes and equipment.
I'd advise to stay away from trying to mechanicaly polish the tip (buffer) unless you have some practice doing that. Just a little heavy handed will produce enough heat to melt the surface of the nicely finished tip and smear the plastic around in a gooey mess. Then you can start over again.

When you apply your stock stain and finish, you can mask the edge of the tip to keep it off the surface. Or go right over it and then carefully wipe any off of the plastic. Then do a final careful touchup polishing when all done.

An ebony tip would look classy too!
Not hard to do, just takes a bit of time and thought as to how you are going to anchor it securely. Then the outside shaping and inletting for the bbl.

2152hq is right.

I'm working on a Remington today. The butt plate, forearm tip, and grip gap if it has one, are made of black Butaprene hard rubber.

When Remington sprays on their stock finish, they spray those black parts including the plastic white spacer (on models that have them). The spacer yellows.

Often when bumped the black parts 'give' and don't dent (butt plates break if bumped hard enough), but the finish cracks and looks ugly.

Then it flakes off, can be scraped off with a fingernail or blunt edge, or sanding is quicker. The scratches can be sanded off the black rubber ending by wet sanding with 2000 grit. Then a real light buff with rouge and I use a small Dremel buff wheel to keep the heat down. I keep the buff wheel moving so it doesn't melt spots. It gives it a more quality looking nice sheen more like ebony.

Note: you can't buff the white line spacer, it melts instantly. I leave it with the 2000 grit finish and avoid it when buffing the rubber. I mask them off when I apply the wood finish.

If the black parts get scratched, it's much easier to touch them up without a finish on them.
Hope this helps,

__________________
Jim
S&WCA #819

Lots of great information here, guys. Thank you very much. Here is a picture of the stripped stock (along with my helper). I started on the fore end tip with fine sandpaper, and had to go all the way down to 320 to get any kind of smoothness. Now to work my way back up to 2000.
The recoil pad had been cut off and a slip-on used, which looked terrible so I fitted a new one. It had no white line spacer so I made one by using a section of the lid from a 5 gallon paint bucket. Will post more pictures when I get it done with a tru-Oil finish.

Attached Images

	Stock A.jpg (83.1 KB, 38 views)
	Stock B.jpg (71.7 KB, 41 views)

All done! I am happy.

Attached Images

	700 BDL 1.jpg (54.2 KB, 28 views)
	700 BDL 2.jpg (91.0 KB, 31 views)

Nice job and worth the time you put into it.

__________________
Jim
S&WCA #819