Daryl,
Good one!
I did nothing to the wood. I think that Brad has developed his case hardening forumlas and processes to restore guns to a muted finish much like a gun with a couple decades of use. This is a great option for a lot of guns that do not need the wood restored.
If you look at the EH that I posted on another thread you will see a well used gun with a stock head repaired and hidden by Jerry Andrews of the PGCA, but with the original wood finish. Certainly Brad could have repaired the stock but I wanted to give my friend Jerry some work. He in turn treated me very well. If I recall correctly (which gets harder to do with every passing year) I started with only having Jerry repair the stock and Brad redo the barrels. When I saw the redone barrels and the repaired stock I just had to go one step further in the restoration. After all, the gun deserved it! Luckily Brad knew how to re-case harden a receiver so that the resulting colors did not look like the receiver left Meridian yesterday.
Thanks,
Mark