[Scorch]

Winchester and Remington were famous for dying their wood. They learned it making military rifles during WW1, and it made all the guns on the rack look the same. Uniformity. It can be good and bad. The stocks all have that same reddish brown lifleless look to them. People even had names for the dyed wood, Winchester red, Remington walnut, Marlin orange finishes. It's one reason why people looked at custom stocks for rifles, different pieces of wood will look totally different based on cut, finish, level of sanding, etc. Nowadays we are seeing a lot more natural wood gunstocks than we ever saw in the past.

I use dyes occasionally to dye or enhance wood grain. I have stripped old Winchester stocks to refinish and found light-colored sap wood under the dye, so dying wood also made it cheaper to make wood stocks, less wasted wood from a log. And if your stock looks like a piece of carboard you can enhance the grain as well.

I have dyed stocks prior to sanding in oil finish, there is less chance of sanding through stain and having to strip and redo a stock. I buy wood dye from woodworker supply stores. The stuff you get from the hardware store is basically the cheapest stuff out there, no good unless you are refinishing uncle Larry's old nightstand.