Cosmoline Removal Help Please!

Der Stahlhelm

Hello all,

What is the best way to remove 60 plus years of cosmline?
I have "Break-Free" but it does not seem to penetrate.

Thanks

rufe-snow

Soak it in the Purple Power stuff that Walmart sells in their automobile dept. It's cheep and not nearly as toxic as the other kinds of powerful solvents.

After soaking use either a plastic or wooden stick to remove as much of the softened cosmoline as you can. Then go to it, with a G.I. tooth brush and plenty of rags.

allen griggs

Wrap gun in lots of paper towels, or else one of your wife's bath towels that she will not miss.
Put the wrapped gun in a big plastic bag.
Set it someplace warm, out in the sunshine, or maybe inside a car on a hot sunny day.
At the end of the day, remove and clean off all the cosmoline that has oozed out.
You may need to repeat the treatment several times.
Then you can wash down the stock with a citrus cleaner.

Der Stahlhelm

OK guys.....I'm going to try the sunshine method first......I'll keep you posted

D.S.COLE

Get a gallon of mineral spirits at Walmart or the paint supply store. Take the gun down as far as possible and put all the parts in an old baking type tin pan and let them soak overnight.Stick the barrel muzzle down in the spirits and use your cleaning rod and a tight fitting patch and pump the rod up and down it will syphon the fluid up just like washing out a muzzleloader.Any big parts can be held over the pan and sloshed with a paint brush and scrubbed ,scrub the stock if needed.brush all the parts and when dry wipe them down ,oil lightly and reassemble. this is the easiest and best way Ive found and also cheap .

spec.4

ok. Something that I can reply to. First make sure your wife is not at HOME. Then pull out the largest pot that you have, fill it up with water. bring it to an boil. Mean time, take out the rack in the oven, turn oven on to 200 degrees. Now place an pcs of foil in the bottom and place the stock in the oven, if it does not fit, place the door up agaist the stock, and place an chair up agaist the door. When you see the cosmo leak out, take Dawn and toothbrush and scrub away, now take an cup and get some boiling water and pour it over the stock till it come clean. Sometime, I use an large soft bruch for the outside of stock. Repeat till little to no comso leak out. Do not dip the stock in water, just let the water run over the stock. The let dry for an week.

spec.4

Old Fool

When doing a long gun you can buy a plastic potting tray from your local garden shop for <$10.oo. They are big enough so that you can immerse the entire weapon in mineral spirits (also cheap) let it soak for as long as you can stand the excitement. Covering the tray with a piece of plywood, etc. will prevent evaporation of the spirits. Take it out and use the GI toothbrush every now and then. You can detail clean it later.

tccox

Take to local car wash, the kind you use the wand. Take gun apart and secure all small pieces where they cannot be blown away and have at it. You can't go wrong with this 75 cents. If pressure is too high, you might can score the wood but most likely not. You can then do final cleaning without the most part of the cosmoline. Tom

dfletcher

Easy Off oven cleaner has always worked well for me on the wood parts.

Dak To 68

The guys at milsurpshooter.net are THE experts on this subject. I've done a lot of it and some stocks I've run across are truly "mission impossible", just too much of it soaked in for too long.

nards444

The best way for wood is to set it by a heater or wood stove. Then scrub the stock with dish soap. For metal I would use mineral spirits or Kerosene for the metal parts. After using all of those things I still had problems getting it out of the metal. Then I found Laquer thinner and that stuff just dissolved off the metal. It worked awesome