Was gone for a few days and couln't get back to you.

Linseed oil shouldn't swell the wood, ,however, water will. If the wood is swelled at all by linseed oil, it would mean that the wood was excessively dried out. Wood will shring when it dries, and if it shrinks too much, it will crack- often around the tang of a rifle stock.

Petroleum oils will degrade and soften wood, while linseed and tung oils are natural oils found in plants which won't harm the cell wall structure of the wood. Sealing with these will keep the stock from drying out, though linseed oil isn't very water resistant, that's why slellac and/or beeswax should be added to it.

As BC said, you would have to slop a lot of oil on a rifle to have it run into the stock and damage it. I'd worry alot more about cleaning practices getting oil or solvents into the wood- using a bore guide will prevent a lot of this from happening, or having the rifle set in a vice with the action upside down if the rifle has to be cleaned from the muzzle end will help too.


'Boiled' linseed oil is linseed oil that has had japan dryer added to it, it has not been physically boiled. The japan dryer helps speed up the crosslinking and polymerization of the finish, so that the linseed oil only takes a day or two to dry instead of weeks or never.