RE: stock refinishing tips?
Tru Oil by Birchwood Casey.
Very light coats and wet sand between coats.
Use progressively finer grit sand paper. You will need at least 6 coats on. Each time you are sanding pratically all the finish off. You don't want a big build up of finish. You just want to fill the grain and let the wood absord the oil.
When you get down to 1500 grit paper and the grain is full, you can buff the stock out with a good paste wax.