Removing Cosmolene

[JosephDerMauserSchiesser]

Brake Cleaner

[Cantom]

Brake Cleaner

Brakleen fits my definition of noxious chemicals you shouldn't be breathing. The steamer thing gets around that issue 100%...would you spray Brakleen inside your house?

[Badger]

Is there any way to save this whole article to the Milsurp Knowledge Library, as I believe the owner of that site has cancer and those articles will cease to exist. I wonder how he's doing btw, I hope well.

Great idea Cantom...

I believe a group of folks have resurrected Jamie's site.

Check here:

http://www.surplusrifleforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=19629

... and then here:

http://www.surplusrifleforum.com/

Jamie is a great guy.... (big salute)

Regards,
Badger

[JosephDerMauserSchiesser]

Brakleen fits my definition of noxious chemicals you shouldn't be breathing. The steamer thing gets around that issue 100%...would you spray Brakleen in our house?

Ya do it outside.
I do it in my fathers lab

[desporterizer]

I try to stay away from water as much as possible(unlees i need to do a major repair) to avoid raising the grain & warpage. The best results I have had so far involved a varsol wash, followed by a couple of hours in the cosmo cooker, then more varsol. The worst I have ever seen was my verguiros. I don't know what they used on those stock but it must be super cosmo. They still leach cosmo every trip to the range(& not a little either). As a side note the more cosmo I take off the the lighter the stock gets & the first place I see cosmo come out is the end grain & the tiger stripes in the side.

[Cantom]

I try to stay away from water as much as possible(unlees i need to do a major repair) to avoid raising the grain & warpage. The best results I have had so far involved a varsol wash, followed by a couple of hours in the cosmo cooker, then more varsol. The worst I have ever seen was my verguiros. I don't know what they used on those stock but it must be super cosmo. They still leach cosmo every trip to the range(& not a little either). As a side note the more cosmo I take off the the lighter the stock gets & the first place I see cosmo come out is the end grain & the tiger stripes in the side.

You're saying the steamer will raise the grain and ruin the wood? I don't like the sound of that but I also have had bad experiences with breathing Thinners vapours for hours trying to get that crud off a rifle...but I don't want to damage a stock either.

[desporterizer]

A steamer is safer than soaking the whole stock but it will raise grain & can warp thin stock like hanguards. Any lightly struck markings are also in danger. Shellac also doesn't like water all that much either. Experiment on a piece of hardwood moulding from the harware store & see what works for you.

[busdriver72]

I have made myself a trough out of PVC pipe and capped the ends.
I use a form of Ed's Red in it, mineral spirits, acteone, and Marvel Mystery Oil.
If a rifle is covered in cosmoline, I place the metal parts in this trough and let them soak. You can make one long enough to lay entire barrel down into. If you're going to try this, don't forget a valve to drain it.
As far as wood goes, I use lots of rags and citrus based cleaners that are safe for wood. On a C&R gun, the goal is to preserve as much of the original finish as possible. A day in the hot summer sun will sweat out a lot of cosmoline from wood.

[Cantom]

I have made myself a trough out of PVC pipe and capped the ends.
I use a form of Ed's Red in it, mineral spirits, acteone, and Marvel Mystery Oil.
If a rifle is covered in cosmoline, I place the metal parts in this trough and let them soak. You can make one long enough to lay entire barrel down into. If you're going to try this, don't forget a valve to drain it.
As far as wood goes, I use lots of rags and citrus based cleaners that are safe for wood. On a C&R gun, the goal is to preserve as much of the original finish as possible. A day in the hot summer sun will sweat out a lot of cosmoline from wood.

After reading that post about water/steam warping wood and raising the grain, I don't think I'll use a steamer on the stock, I think leaving it out in the hot sun will work very well. I do think I'll try the steamer on the action. That Cosmo is very tough to remove...

How did the army do it btw? They're the ones who sealed up their rifles in this stuff, what about when they needed to use the rifles again? Talk about an industrial sized job...

[Cyrano4747]

I've de-cosmoed 10 rifles at this point and there is only one method which I find works every time. I do a detail strip of the rifle, put all the small parts in a pot of boiling water, and remove them while the water is still near boiling temperature. The heat of the metal evaporates most of the water and the rest can be hand dried off.

For the big metal parts I wipe off all the excess that I can get to with a rag lightly wetted with a petroleum solvent (usually turpentine because that's what I have around in large quantities). After that evaporates off the metal I break out the most important tool I have for cosmo removal: my trusty heat gun. This works wonders on those hard to reach areas like the inside of the chamber, small metal cutouts, and the like. Turn it on high, point it at the afflicted area, and watch the cosmolene literally pour out.

For the stocks I put them in my oven at about 150 degrees if they'll fit in there. NOTE: This will stink up your oven. Your wife/girlfriend/whatever may not approve, but it really does work and won't screw up the stock at all. The heat is no worse than what the barrel channel gets during prolonged firing, and it's enough to really draw the old cosmo out. If the stock's too big I've got a solar oven I made out of sheet plastic and two by fours. It's basically a small sheet plastic greenhouse that traps sunlight for a similar effect.

I've seen too many stocks ruined by harsh chemicals to really feel comfortable using them on my wood anymore, hence this approach.

As for what the military did, I don't have any proof of this, but an old friend of the family who served with the US Army in WW2 says he remembers watching supply companies dunk M1 carbines in big drums of boiling water to get it off. From what he described, it sounds like they'd pop the stocks off, wipe the grease off those with a rag, throw the rest of the rifle in the water, boil off the grease, dry them off, and call it good enough. They really didn't baby those guns in the same way we do. He claimed that they had them hanging somehow so they could do a bunch at one time - he described it as looking like the old candle-dipping machines.