Charlie,
If the stock is dark from soaked in oil, you will need to remove it and soak it in a pan of acetone or lacquer thinner. It sometimes takes a week or more to draw out all the oil. I also usually have to take the wood out, let it dry thoroughly, and apply heat from a heat gun to draw deeply embedded oil out of the head end of the stock, several times. If you just wash the outside of the stock with a solvent, it will remove the surface oil, but in time the deep oil will migrate up to the surface, appearing as dark splotches, and ruin the new finish. So you really need to soak it to draw out all the oil before refinishing.
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