Anyone that can tell me about their experience in raising dents in wood using moisture and heat?

I have a set of stock with some dents that need to be raised.

From what I heard a long time ago, a wet towel and an iron do it. I had a shotgun forearm that needed some raised but an all day duck hunt in the rain completely restored them to flush.

Its really no big deal,wet rag and an iron always worked good for me,being an old skeet shooter I have had to raise a few,it will also take all the oil out as well and help get it ready for finish,just take your time and it will come out nice.

Sometimes just putting a drop or two of water on the dent and letting it sit will raise it. Also if you use the iron and damp towel method on a high gloss finish, moisture can get trapped under the finish and cause an haze. It most times will disappear but takes along time, of course if you are going to refinish, no big deal.

I've had good luck raising dents by using a dampened folded t-shirt or diaper, etc. and a copper penny.

Wet the cotton - wring it out - fold once or twice - lay over dent - put penny on cloth directly over dent - appply hot iron to the penny. This generates enough wet heat w/o really steaming the wood and the copper both concentrates and spreads the heat but not so much that the wood 'overswells' while expanding to fill the dent.

Problem in raising dents is that you are actually swelling the wood and thus at same time enlarging the pores in the wood. Filling the pores should be done carefully so as not to have the 'filler' (many use shellac, etc.) show as bright spots under whatever final finish you eventually use.

If you can obtain pulverized 'dust' of the same wood the stock is made of, it is probably the best filler - i.e. you are putting the 'same wood back into the same wood.'

There are other ways, I am sure

I just raised the checkering on a Ruger 77-22 hornet that got knocked over and dented the forearm checkering, wet wash cloth and the iron and they come back right, I had hunted my checkering tools and could not find them and was glad I couldnt as the steam did a better job. Jeff

I am glad you fellas are having success with steaming out the dents, because I have tried it several times with extremely limited success. I dropped my beautiful Browning Superposed shotgun when my boot got caught in a deep mud puddle (while chasing a Pheasant) and it picked up a dent that measured approximately 1" x 1/4" 1/16" deep. I did try the steaming routine and I would estimate that the dent only came up about half way even after repeated attempts. Since the finish on that gun is a very high gloss Urethane type finish, I kept adding light coats of Poly Urethane allowing them to dry thoroughly between coats. After going at this for a week, I had successfully filled the the dent to the level of the stock. That worked out very well, but what really got my dander up is I never did get that Pheasant!

Chief38

this may sound like blasphemy to the purists, but the issue of dents & grease removal comes up a lot on the M1 Garand forums. I have tried steaming with an iron, and steaming with a steam cleaner, but the best overall method seems to be the dishwasher.

I have 2 old M1 stocks that were beyond bad, not greasy but beat to heck & too loose to tighten the receiver into. A normal wash cycle & dry raised all the dents, swelled up the compressed areas where the action beds & removed all the old finish & oil.

The theory is that steaming forces moisture into the compressed cells, the steam heats that moisture, which in turn forces the compressed cells to expand back to original shape. By golly, the dishwasher did just that & after drying for a couple of days left me with a fuzzy surface that cleaned up with light sanding and rub with 0000 steel wool.

I have found that the wood in the raised areas tends to be a bit softer as it never completely regains its cellular structure, but doesn't refinish any differently than the surrounding wood.

Hope this helps - a word of caution though, this method will petty well wipe out any stampings or military cartouches that you might want to save. I have a set of per-war diamond magnas that someone used a letter punch on but I don't want to remove the medallions to do the dishwasher routine. John

On small dents, I use an electric soldering gun for the heat source. A wet cloth as normal, and I wet the spot on the wood too before hand. I get the dent soaked with as much water as I can to soften up the fibers. The heat will dry it out quickly.
If the wood fibers are split rather than just pushed in, they will never fully recover but can look better than a big gash.

The dish washer method works well. Actually any extremely hot water source works well to raise dents. No worry about getting too much water on the wood as it will dry out in a matter of a few minutes on the surface and the entire piece will dry overnight.
Some stampings will actually raise above the wood surface at times doing this.

The wood will be very soft with the hot water and easily damaged by scratching, bumping or other damage while handling. It regains strength when dry.

I use it to rinse the wood after stripping and/or bleaching stocks with oxalic acid. It removes alot of small dents and dings with no further work.

It has worked for me. Water & heat - lots of both.

DON'T use the wife's steam iron unless you plan on getting her a new one! DAMHIK!

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-jwk-
US Army '72-'95