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Use the water stain first and let it totally dry. Water will raise the grain and you will need to use a block and maybe the 400 grit to level that. And a second staining will help insure the top layer of wood has attained its full color.
After you're satisfied with the color and surface texture, apply a thinned coat of Tru-Oil and lightly 'wet' sand that, you may need to do it a couple more times to sand off a bit of wood and force it into the open pores. Observe light reflections off the surface, when the pores are filled to your satisfaction it's time to start building your surface thickness. (And make sure you saturate/seal the raw interior wood as well, the finish will help reduce water absorbtion on rainy days in the woods.)
I prefer to spread very thin coats with wet finger tips, spreading it with my hand and leaving it to dry a full day between coats. I will go over it lightly with 4/0 steel wool before each successive coat to knock off dust nibs. It takes 5 - 7 top coats to achieve what I'm after, sometimes much more.
I let the last coat cure for a couple of weeks before rubbing it down to a uniform dull surface with the steel wool and polishing it back up with fine auto or boat rubbing compound to get the gloss I'm after. It looks like the old Browning or Remington stock finishes but without the brittleness of epoxy. Both Tru-Oil and Linspeed are very good stock finishes.
I'm sure other methods will work too.
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