[Smokey Joe]

Just got a nice M-48 Mauser, stock soaked in cosmo of course. Have heard multiple suggestions for getting rid of it. What is the BEST way?

[Clean97GTI]

I've heard of people warming the wood in an oven to "sweat" it out.

Put it in an oven around 250° and watch it carefully. The little beads of "sweat" should be cosmoline.

[DMK]

Cosmoline is grease. What melts grease? Heat. What disolves melted grease? Solvent.

In the summertime, I take everything apart and put the stuff in my hot car (on cardboard of course). Let everything get good and hot, then take one part out at a time and clean it. In the winter, I make due with my oven and a craft heat gun (hair dryer may work also),

As a solvent, I've found mineral spirits works the best. Hoppes #9 works well too, but it's expensive to waste like that. Keep your solvent away from the heat gun. Warm the parts, then clean. Do the two processes in seperate areas.

Some folks say use brake parts cleaner. I love that stuff to clean my guns, but it has one problem when removing cosmo. It makes the parts cold. Cold cosmoline turns solid. You want liquid cosmo. Keep the parts warm.

For the stock, you can also use Purple Power which is a water based grease cutter. It works good, but is still works better if you warm the stock first. Let the Purple Power soak a few minutes then rinse with boiling water. I used oven cleaner instead of Purple Power once. It worked about the same. Whatever you use, you will need to keep wiping it down with rags or paper towels and repeating. It takes a bit of work and you'll never get it all out. That stuff has been soaking into the stock for a long time.

[M2 Carbine]

I use Easy Off oven cleaner.

The last time on a CMP M1 Garand stock.
It took 3-5 coats to degrease some of the stock.

I lay it out in the hot sun on cardboard and soak it good with the oven cleaner.
Give it an hour or two them squirt it off with a hose.
Repeat as necessary.

A side benefit is the water causes some of the little dings in the stock to smooth out.

Take all the metal off the stock or the oven cleaner and water can rust it pretty quick.

This last stock looked so bad when I got it I was debating on throwing it away.
But this is what it looks like after degreasing and one coat of Tru Oil.
( I figure 3 coats of TO will be good)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v135/Bell406_206B/New_M1_2.jpg

[desmark6]

I have to agree with the easy off oven cleaner, I used it on a couple of surplus Mausers and thay were good and clean in less then an hour or so. The other fun way is just to shoot it till it's hot, works just like the oven but much more fun! ( although it is messy, but easier to explain to the wife!) Good luck, no matter what you do cosmoline is not fun to deal with.

[Smokey Joe]

M2, that is one beautiful M-1! I wonder if the last drill instructor who chewed out a recruit for having 1/10 of a spider's leg on it would even recognize it! :) :)

Thanks to all who have replied. Will report on the results when/as/if I ever get rid of mebbe 2/3 of the cosmo on the M-48.

[Feanaro]

If using the oven doesn't work for you, or it's too small, take a hair dryer to the stock. I did that with my M48A, it bled cosmoline for hours.

[Houndawg]

I wouldn't even go near a stock with a can of oven cleaner in my hand. Why would you want to mistreat an innocent piece of wood like that? It might look pretty when you get it finished, but since the cleaner will destroy the cellular structure of the wood, you'll probably have a brittle stock sometime down the road.

Heat and patience are probably the best ways to remove cosmoline from wood. There's a picture somewhere on the web of a stock heater a guy made out of HVAC ducting and a ceramic space heater.

[kaferhaus]

I wouldn't even go near a stock with a can of oven cleaner in my hand. Why would you want to mistreat an innocent piece of wood like that? It might look pretty when you get it finished, but since the cleaner will destroy the cellular structure of the wood, you'll probably have a brittle stock sometime down the road.

I've heard that also... however the 2 rifles that I used it on 12yrs ago apparently haven't.... they cleaned up just fine and I scrubbed the hell out of them.... Easy off oven cleaner works. and if it damages the wood, it must take decades for you to ever be able to tell...

The two I used it on still look as good and are just as solid as they were the day I finished them. No soft spots, no "bleaching" of the grain etc....

[greyhound]

I put my SKS stock and handguard in the oven at 200 (on top of a "tray" I made out of tin foil).

I turned it and wiped it down often.

I am getting married soon, I do not think I will be able to pull that trick anymore~! :)

[George S.]

For the metal, I have used non-chlorinated brake parts cleaner. The pressure in the can will cut through layers of cosmoline quickly. You can also detail-strip parts and let them soak overnight in a can full of mineral spirits. You will need to scrub with an old toothbrush but it works fine.

Mineral spirits also works on stocks; use a hair dryer to heat the wood to get the old grease and cosmo warm and it will flow out to where youcan wipe with a cloth soaked im MS. I have used a quartz space heater with good results. Sit the stock upright about 2 feet directly in front of the heater and wipe the wood with a rag soaked in mineral spirits as it seeps out.

Any stain in the stock may come off but for most military stocks a couple of coats of boiled linseed oil will return it to an as-issued condition. Tung oil also works as a finish and will even provide a moisture barrier.

Some people say that placing a wood stock in the diswasher and adding some soap and running it thru the -pot-scrubber cycle works. Don't use the heat cycle to dry the stock, just let it air dry over a few days. A light sanding with 220-paper to remove the "fuzz" from the wash cycle and use ytour favorite combination of stain, BLO and/or Tung oil.

[Sir Aardvark]

In the past I have used sawdust and Diatomaceous Earth packed all around the stock to help pull out more of the oil. I did this after wiping off all the major crud that I could. This stuff acts like a sponge and wicks out quite a bit of the oil. Leaving the stock out in the sunshine so it warms up is also a good idea when doing this.

If found that if you use just Diatomaceous Earth, it can sometimes get a little pasty, then a friend of mine suggested the addition of dried sawdust to add a little bulk, and that worked better for me. Good Luck!!

[pete f]

Easy off has Sodium Hydroxide as the active agent in it, this is lye. For hundreds of years people have used lye to treat wood and to clean wood. As long as the Lye is washed off with a lot of clean water before you start refinishing, Lye will not damage the wood. We used to have a tank of many hundreds of gallons of lye in it and we would dump old pine furniture in it to strip off the old paint and grime and crud and then sell it at the shop i worked in.

[cabinetman]

The truth about Cosmo cleaning is that you're only dealing with the very surface of the stock when using any cleaning agent. If exposed long enough, cosmo will soak to the core of the stock. If you don't believe me, look at these old stocks which were ruined and not retrievable.

http://members.cox.net/romanpolaski/curiosandrelics/cosmo%202.jpg

When cosmo gets that deep and you only clean the surface, eventualy it will precipitate right out as soon as the stock gets warm.

So, cleaning the surface with caustic stuff won't do very much. I won't use any lye-based materials. It's really not doing anything more than a good solvent like acetone or lacquer thinner will do and you're not using any water. Water is the enemy of any wood....especially old stocks.

So, heating the stocks in black plastic bags with kitty litter in the sun works as do 'heating tubes" or oven bakes as some have mentioned. The goal is to draw as much oil as possible to the surface. Since it's warmer outside than in, the colder oil will flow to the surface and get absorbed by the litter. Keep doing that as long as it comes out. Truthfully, you will NOT get it all out.

After you've heated the stock, clean the surface with acetone or lacquer thinner and let it sit until all of it is evaporated. The stock will appear much lighter. DON'T use mineral spirits. It's too oily and will only slow down the process.

When the stock is finally ready to refinish, you can dye back any color that's missing. Cosmo tends to neutralize the pigment if left long enough. After coloring with an alcohol based dye, the next step is important. I recommend that you shoot it with a coat of shellac. Spray shellac from a can is fine. Shellac is impervious to oil and will seal in any remaining cosmo. Hang the stock and shoot it twice with complete but light coats of shellac. Then sand just the finish lightly with some stearated (lubricated) sanding paper....220 works great. Finally go ahead and finish the stock with either oil or shellac depending on the original finish. When you're done, you can then burnish the finished surface with some 0000 steel wool dipped in oil (never use steel wool dry!) . That will produce a very authentic looking finish in either case unless you want a really shiney stock.

Never, ever, bath a stock in anything. It will absorb anything you bath it in and I've heard of many cases where gasoline or keroscene was used and the stocks become "water logged" with those items as they replace the cosmo.

Cosmo is a bugger but it can be mitigated with these suggestions and you can reproduce a great, authentic finish using modern dyes and finishes.

Rome

[Big Man]

I took a little less conventional approach to cosmo removal. I have found there are two different types of cosmo. The stuff my sks came swimmimg in was completely different than the stuff on the mn and the k31.
After I had broken down the rifle...I took the barrel assy to the local car wash. Whats better to take off grease than hot soapy water under pressure.
The sks cleaned up to where you could eat off it. The only glitch in the plan was me not covering the gas port when I pointed the nozzel down the barrel. I got a very wet on that one.
I tried the same procedeure on the next two barrels with different results. They didnt clean up as nice. The washer took the heavy stuff off...but it left a thin coating of grease on the metal. So I used brake clean on that. It came out perfect. just dont get the Brake Clean on the wood. It discolors it real fast.
As an aside here... my sks is Chinese. So who better to translate the chinese markings on the barrel but a chinese...waitress.
So I go walking into my local chinese buffet with the barrel assy wrapped in a towel. It's about 2 in the afternoon, so theres nobody else in there. Now keep in mind I'm there 3 times a week. I know all the waitresses and they know me. So when I walked in they were glad to see me and were all smiles. When they saw what was in the towel...the head waitress freaked. She knew exactly what I was holding. The younger ones didnt seem too bothered by it...but the hostess was plenty excited. So she told me what the marknigs were...and grabbed my sholder and escorted me out the door. That was over a year ago. I dont even think she remembers it now. I still go in there about twice a week. I wont forget the look in her eyes. She has been exposed to rifles before.

[RicVa]

I have had good success using carburetor cleaner to remove cosmoline.

[Smokey Joe]

All of the above has been most informative! A BIG THANK YOU!!to all who have troubled to write in. I'm learning more about cosmoline removal--both practically and intellectually--than i ever expected to know!