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Recently acquired some magazines and other stuff jam packed with cosmoline. In the past, I've had good luck with just using regular gasoline and a stiff-bristle brush. The oil would disolve easily enough, although the paraffin would require some elbow grease to get rid of. But I've always been successful doing this in the past.

(For those unfamiliar, cosmoline is a mix of gun oil or motor oil and wax, creating goopy gelatinous spooge that is slathered on guns and gun stuff put in deep storage as an anti-corrosion preservative. Typically applied at high temp in a more liquid state, which then solidifies.)

But I guess the Brits used an entirely different wax recipe, because while I was able to get them free of oily brown sticky, and scrubbed and scrubbed, I was still left with a resilient whitish layer of residue everywhere. Further scrubbing with gasoline failed to remove it.

I'm tempted to next try acetone, but I'm slightly worried that might attack other finishes. So before I go any further, I wonder if the brain trust here has any experience with using solvents other than gasoline to dissolve away cosmoline and its notorious waxy remnants. What have you successfully used in the past?

Try mineral spirits.

Gasoline and steam

This is all you need (and you won't blow yourself up). I usually add 25% hot water to slightly dilute it. Works great on blued steel, but don't use on painted (or other coated) items. Purple Power

I had bad try with that but I may not have diluted well enough. It left a whitish coating that was near as bad as the cosmoline to remove for me.

I use a steamer and a heat gun. Steamers work especially well for the wood stock. Heat guns work well for bolts and carrier groups. I've put some stock in black plastic bags out in the sun, heats up well during the summer.

Have a great, gun carryin', Kenpo day

Clyde

Oven

With our weather you can also let it sit outside to help leach out the cosmoline.

PK90 wrote: ↑September 21st, 2023, 4:19 amOven

NOT the oven inside your home.

Boiling water also works well, but you are left with a tub of hot water with a layer of cosmoline floating on top.

Black plastic bags, wrap gun in paper towels and place in bags then place in the sun. Drink 6 beers and it should be almost done.

Citrus spray cleaner for the wood, and a big pot of boiling water with a little Simple Green added for cleaning the metal parts

Grease, (which is basically what Cosmoline is), cuts the best with a light oil based solvent. Clean Kerosene is just about perfect. It's cheap, will not harm wood or plastic, and cut's through the driest, thickest Cosmoline.

If the smell bothers you, plain WD-40 also works very well, and it's available in gallon sized cans are places like Home Depot and Lowe's.