Need some help making my Mosin pretty again!

[Drame22]

Hello,

Bought 2 mosin nagants from Bud's Gun shop.

I've been researching this for a few months prior to buying them, but I'm wondering what NW Firearms has to say about getting rid of cosmoline, specifically from the wood.

The metal's easy enough, but the wood has as many solutions to cleaning out cosmo as Russia had Mosins.

So far the best looks to be a hair dryer. Any thoughts? I may also need to refinish the stock, does anyone know how to get rid of the original finish?

Cheers,
Drame22

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[speeddemon94]

Google will be your best friend.


Let me google that for you

Let me google that for you

 

[Drame22]

Yeah, that was my first stop. I was more asking which method is the best in terms of time taken and cost.

For instance, it's free to set it in the sun, but A) I live nowhere near sunny regions, and B) it takes months for the cosmo to fully bead out.

Google is great, but not for narrowing choices down.

 

[JV100]

youtube it.. a lot of demos on refinishing and even sporterizing..

 

[Tigershark]

Cosmoline will disolve with acetone but not very well. When I refinish an old military oil finished stock, I use oven cleaner to leach out the oil. I spray the oven on and let it foam up. leave it on for about 15 min. Then I rinse it in hot tap water. The bathtub is a good place as long as your better half doesn't know. You might have to do it a couple times.
Then I rub it down with mineral spirits. Watch the inletting, that's where the most oil will soak in. It's worth a try.

 

[MountainBear]

Short of an oven big enough to bleed the cosmoline out of the stock, or enough patience in a naturally hot environment, then a heat gun or hair dryer will be your best friend. It's going to be messy. Have lots of rags in a well ventilated area, and probably a pan under the stock to collect the drippings unless you want to clean up your floor...

Go slow to avoid scorching the stock.

 

[mancat]

^^^^^

I put cosmolined parts into the oven at its lowest setting, with a sheet of foil beneath. Cosmoline will start to melt and bleed out at anything above 100F. I've done wood parts this way and never had a problem. Pull the part out every half hour or so, wipe off any cosmoline that's bled or sweated out, and do it again. Eventually it just stops coming out.

Not sure if you can fit the whole stock in there, but I've done paint baking on an entire AK in a standard oven without issues.

The most important part is that I do it at the beginning of the day, with lots of ventilation, well ahead of when my wife might come home. When you're done heating the cosmoline out, close up the oven and run it for a half hour at 400. It will clear out.

 

[DieselScout]

On my mosin, everything was pretty clean when I got it. However, I still stripped all the metal parts off I could. I dropped them into a bucket of Castrol Super Clean and let them sit for 20 minutes or so. Then scrubbed them with a tooth brush. I rinsed them in hot water and then dried them in my over on a foiled cookie sheet at the lowest setting. I then reassembled.

My stock is in good shape, I don't know if the PO did anything special to bleed out the cosmoline, but I don't get any bleed out when I shoot it alot. I am not too concerned about the stock as I am swapping it out.

 

[pakrat57]

Wrap it in paper towel to soak up the cosmo, then wrap it in a large black trash bag. Put it in direct sun and it should get fairly warm. I also used denatured alcohol to remove surface cosmo and old varnish that had gotten sticky.

 

[308]

I have one of these smoker ovens from Walmart. Mostly gets used for baking my Gunkote finishes. It's big enough to hang an AK barreled/receiver assembly and should be large enough for a gun stock.

Most of all it keeps the cosmoline stench out of the house...even tho it makes me a bit giddy when I get a whiff

Char Broil Gas Smoker - Walmart.com