CLEANING WOOD STOCKS
A customer brought in a 1903 (from the cmp) to be cleaned up. It looked like it had been draged behind a truck and then coated in cosmoline. Wood compleatly grease soaked, hardly and metal finish and what was there didn't match (blued action/parkerised barrel, ww2 rebuild). And naturaly he didn't what to spend a lot of $$ on it. I figured I could clean the metal parts, run them through my rust remover tank and reblue them without any buffing. the stock was sound but soaked with grease... well I had my cleaning solution hot(brownells dicro-clean 909) and I intended to mix a new batch for my next bluing run and way so in went the stock and I let it boil for about 1/2 hr. Let it dry in the sun for a couple of days, sanded with 60 & 120 grit paper and a couple of coats on boil linseed oil. I've let it sit in the sun for hours and NO bleed out of grease.
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I just received a gun that has been stored in a wool lined case for a long time and guess what. The gun is covered in wool...the stock and metal. The wool is stuck all over the gun. What is the best way to clean this gun? Thanks. 0 -
I put an old greasy stock from a Stevens shotgun in the oven. If you have one thats large enough for that gun to fit in, you might want to try that. 0 -
Hey Mike,
Pretty impressive! RangerP from the GB auction side (one of my neighbors) has been boiling stocks like that for awhile now, and it surely seems to do the trick. I would never have thought to use the Dicro, but it surely sounds like a winner if you are going to toss the solution anyway! The Greek guns surely looked like crapola to me too, and this seems to be the only way to get them to looked decent without loosing a pound of grease soaked wood to sanding! Nice job.
"When I cease learning...I'm dead"(Me)
"When I was 14 I used to marvel at how ignorant my old man was...by the time I was 21 I was truelly amazed at how much the old bugger had learned in the intervening 7 years!" Samuel Clemens
"History is written by winners"(Patton)
"You get a lot farther with a kind word and a gun than you do with a kind word alone!"(Al Capone)
"There is nothing lower than the human race...except the French" (Samuel Clemens)0 -
A couple of years ago I bought a 1903 from CMP. The rifle arrived and at first my heart just sunk. I couldn't see the wood for the grease. The metal was in very good to excellent condition with what looked like a new barrel by HS 44 and 4 groove to boot. A friend who has the gages says that the chamber measured 1.5 and the muzzle less than 1. Well, I cleaned the metal and then started in on the wood. Stiff fiber brush, acetone, finsh remover and 2 week of brushing and the oil finally quit oozing out. Heated it up with a hair dryer and then let it sit for a month to see if anymore oil would ooze out. Finally put a little stain on it and started to rub in coats of True Oil and let them dry. Put on 6 coats and rubbed down good between coats. Let dry for a month and it is truly remarkable just how good that old stock looks now. It is very tight grained walnut but no figure and very little sapwood. I wish I could put a picture on here but I am mostly computer challenged and haven't figured it out yet. Mike's method sounds a lot simplier and I wish I had thought of it myself. From the picture you posted Mike, you did a real nice job. And thanks for the info, I'll try in out sometime in the near future. 0
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