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mosin nagant cosmo removal?

brunette63
should i just refinish the stock or is there away to not have 2 that and remove cosmoline completly
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10 comments

Date Votes
  • rufe-snow
    Try soaking it in the Purple Power stuff that Walmart sells in their auto department.
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  • iwannausername
    Gentle heat - think black trash can in full sunlight - will cause a lot of it to seep out. Or take the stock down to a car wash that has a steam clean/power wash thing.
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  • 11b6r
    Methods are heat, solvent, brute force. Cosmoline is melted, and weapons dipped into the melted gook. Reheating turns it liquid. My technique is to roll in brown paper grocery bags or newspaper, place in black plastic garbage bag, place on rear deck in direct sun. You may have to do this and replace the paper covering a few times. You can use detergents, like the purple or simple green, or more agressive things like EZ Off oven cleaner (shudder!) Scrub it in low odor mineral spirits (less chance of setting self on fire than other aromatic solvents) OR get a LOT of rags, and start wiping.
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  • TWalker
    To clean the stocks, I wipe off excess cosmoline with paper towels then spray with WD-40, wipe off again,then pour rubbing alcohol over everything and wipe again. The alcohol drys out the wood surface so I rub it one last time with WD-40. I can clean a "new" Mosin-Nagant in about 30 minutes total. I use extra fine steel wool when cleaning metal parts, rubbing alcohol is great for removing the old yellowed dried oil from bolt parts and action.
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  • deerhide
    I've used gasoline, outdoors of course, and a plastic, vegetable-type brush with plenty paper towels.......
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  • SoreShoulder
    It occurs to me that the proper, least damaging way would be the way the military did it, but this thread I uncovered where someone posted asking how the military did it, seems to be about evenly split between hot water and solvents.http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=265672

    I was hoping to find a method that would be easy on the original wood finish.
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  • Bergtreffer
    In the past I have worn rubber gloves and then lathered up the wood real good with a mechanics hand cleaner like Go-jo. Lather it up, rub it good, wipe it down with paper towels. Do it again and after the second treatment the wood should be looking pretty good.

    For the bore of a rifle all gooped up with cosmo, blug the muzzle end with a cork and shoot brake cleaner into the chamber end until the barrel fills up. Set the barreled action aside and let the brake cleaner work for a while. To drain, crumpled about several paper towels, pull the cork and let it drain into the toweling. After that you might want to wire brush to bore with brake cleaner, and after that use some patches. The patches will tell you how clean the bore is becoming. Brake cleaner is your friend when cleaning out goopy bores.
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  • stankemp
    Yet another way.
    I just refinished a Gehandra Martini-Rossi that had 100+year old cosmoline caked on it with paint stripper (thick kind) and steel wool.
    After that I wiped it down with 70% isopropyl alcohol.
    refinished with 4 coats on Minwax antique oil finish.
    Worked great.
    Use rubber gloves when working with the stripper.
    Stan
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  • 1KYDSTR
    Yet another approach...tried and true. Destock the gun and dip the caked stock in a 55 gal drum of really hot (not boiling) water for about 10 minutes at a time and wipe with paper towel or completely disposable cloth towels. A few dunks normally does it. After the stock dries out completely (I rarely sand if ever) I use Homer Formby Tung oil as it most closely replicates a european military style finish (BLO would be my choice on American Service guns) and rub it in until you get the desired matte sheen...more rubbing just makes it shinier.
    Same thing with the action...dunk and wipe then use a blow drier to get the water out of the tight spots and then generous amounts of good oil to insure the pores are full of rust inhibitor. This has worked well for me after having tried most every other method.
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  • jaws55
    ON THE METAL PARTS OF THE GUN ONLY I HIGHLY RECOMEND USING BREAK PARTS CLEANER. THAT STUFF WILL CLEAN COSMOLINE BETTER THAT ANYTHING I HAVE PERSONALLY USED. THEN SPRAY DOWN THE METAL WITH REM OIL OR WD-40. AS FOR THE STOCK I HAVE HAD GREAT LUCK WITH JUST WD-40 AND COTTON T-SHIRT RAGS. I HAVE ONLY CLEANED MAUSERS. DON'T KNOW IF THE COSMOLINE IS DIFFERENT FROM COUNTRY TO COUNTRY
    GOOD LUCK
    JOE
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