How To Remove Cosmoline From Gun
Those of yous with any amount of experience dealing with milsurp guns have probably also encountered the enigma of cosmoline.
The gooy, gross, petroleum preservative that is seemingly locked within every porous surface and crack possible.
Usually requiring a full detail stripping and cleaning of the rifle before its remotely capable of being operated safely.
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Okay, What Is Cosmoline?
For the unfamiliar, cosmoline is sort of the genericized term for a family of petroleum-based greases with remarkably high viscosity with inherent rust and corrosion protective properties, a signature waxy dark-brown visage, and unmistakable industrial smell.
Originally adult in the belatedly 1800s and marketed as a home disinfectant and veterinary anti-swelling amanuensis, presumably by the same turn of the century physicians inclined to prescribe you cocaine for a staph infection or whatsoever.
Cosmoline was quickly adopted by militaries the globe over as a manner to chemically embalm small arms, artillery pieces, armored vehicles, and so on for either long term storage or trips beyond the Atlantic.
Sealing them in a greasy tomb of cosmo guards confronting the corrosive nature of maritime environments.
And that brings us to where we are today…
What You'll Need:
There are lots of options and choices yous tin make, but what we used were:
- Shop Rags
- Paper towels
- Examination Gloves
- Lyman Sonic Cleaner
- Lyman Turbo Sonic Cleaner Solvent
- Non-chlorinated Brake-cleaner
- Bore Rod
- Q-Tips
- Goof-Off
Time To Clean
Specifically, we've got iii surplus Type 56 carbines that we picked up from Palmetto State Armory — which are substantially Chinese domestic clones of the Soviet SKS with a few minor tweaks hither and at that place.
Once more, if you lot've always dealt with military surplus guns before, you might have some experience with the somewhat laborious process of removing the infamous goop from them.
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Prices accurate at time of writing
Prices authentic at time of writing
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Simply it'southward worth noting that every cosmolined gun is going to be a little bit dissimilar in terms of uh… grease severity.
Cosmoline hardens over time when exposed to oxygen and not sealed properly, so some might exist very gooy while others are hardened assurance of crud.
In our case, the two Type-56's we received directly were definitely in the latter category of goo-boundedness, with lots of solvent-resistant hardened grease nuggets tucked abroad throughout the entire firearm.
Be that every bit it may, your general overall approach to de-gunking your gun is going to be pretty like no thing how much shit is congenital up inside it.
Showtime off, you lot're going to desire to disassemble the gun down to a level that you're comfy with.
While actually bad cosmoline build-up might crave a few steps farther than a field stripping for any rifle you're working on.
With the Blazon 56, we broke the guns down into their chief field-strippable components: rifle stock, barreled activeness, bolt carrier, assembly, trigger associates, magazine, op rod, etc.
If you've lucked out and scored a surplus rifle with some relatively lite cosmo packing, y'all can probably spring alee to cleaning the individual components, but for us, footstep 1 was wiping away what external grease was easily attainable with some bones shop rags.
Don't worry too much if you can't actually get to nigh of the grease yet, but consider this an initial pass that'll make afterwards cleaning a little fleck easier.
From there if you're working on a burglarize with wooden components, now's the time to split them and toss them in a trash purse.
Because of the general porous nature of wood, chances are pretty decent that a proficient amount of grease has managed to penetrate the wood fiber itself, fifty-fifty if it retained its original finish.
Luckily, cosmoline melts at anywhere between 115-125 degrees Fahrenheit.
Which makes it susceptible to environments that too kill pocket-size children and pets when they get locked within minivans — which nosotros'll simulate by stuffing it in that trash bag and letting the angry heat orb exterior do its thing.
From there, we similar to take all of the small components and run them through a nice sonic cleaner bathroom to gratis upward some of the hardened gunk that'due south worked its way into small spaces.
This give us a headstart on polishing those bad boys up or if left long enough, cleans them totally with almost no extra work on your end.
We personally used a Lyman sonic cleaner and Lyman solvent, which worked pretty well and got us most of the way there, with but a tiny bit of extraneous scrubbing required afterwords.
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Prices accurate at time of writing
Prices accurate at time of writing
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While our pocket-size parts soak, we took the barrelled activeness and receiver outside to merely absolutely douse in brake cleaner.
Common internet gun wisdom is that you're going to want non-chlorinated brake cleaner, as a byproduct of chlorinated brake cleaner heating upwards is phosgene gas.
Please — avoid producing WW1-era invisible poisons in your shed.
Restriction cleaner is pretty nasty even it's not in chlorinated form though, so make sure yous've got gloves and a well-ventilated area to work in.
Depending on how much hardened build-up you lot've got, it'll probably take you a few cans of brake cleaner to become everything loosened up.
Nosotros wound upwardly using about ~three cans of cleaner full per burglarize, using a general "spray vigorously and begin wiping downward" method.
Once you've got all of the surface cosmoline more or less handled, you'll want to actually starting time tackling the goo in all of the nooks and crannies of the receiver.
We personally institute Q-tips to exist useful if a bit tedious. Throw on a podcast or something — yous're likely going to be hither for a bit. If y'all demand suggestions, try one of our favorite YouTube channels.
With that out of the style, spray a shitton of restriction cleaner into the barrel and gas ports likewise, then use a bore cleaning brush to ram all of that nasty ass gunk out.
This is evidently going to exist one of the more critical parts of your cosmoline cleaning voyage, equally whatever remainder buildup you don't accost is going to negatively impact the accurateness of the rifle in one case yous go information technology out to the range.
We used our same bore brush to ram out the gas tube as well — and while information technology's not as disquisitional to get this part every bit sparkling clean equally the butt, you manifestly don't want whatsoever obstructions in the cavity that your piston sits inside.
All-time Fill-in
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Prices authentic at time of writing
Prices accurate at fourth dimension of writing
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At this point you can bank check upwardly on your sonic cleaner parts and see how they're doing.
In our example, you might demand to run the gadget a few times to really penetrate the crud.
Y'all tin can empty your icky cosmoline soup every bit y'all go along or just leave it, cosmo floats in h2o so you might demand to skim that off at least earlier taking the parts out.
But it's a background process that y'all can by and large leave alone outside of hitting the timer again once information technology'due south finished a circular of cleaning.
Once y'all've got your barrel and receiver assembly cleaned upwards, you lot tin check on your sweaty forest bois and run into where they're at.
A couple of hours in the hot seat predictably allowed a ton of cosmoline that had been locked inside of the woods fibers the opportunity to seep out to the surface.
Wipe it off with a combination of shop rags for the surface grease, too as goof-off to grab any of the viscous residues that are going to be left behind.
Once you've uh… unslimed your wood, return to your sonic cleaner components and apply brake cleaner as needed to grab whatever chunks that might exist left with your Q-tips.
Something to pay final attention to when doing the last pass on all of your minor internal parts is the firing pin channel.
Depending on the gun you're working on, this may or may not be a business. For rifles like the SKS with a free-floating firing pin, information technology'south a critical place to make sure you got REALLY clean.
Free-floating firing pins, like the one found in AR-15s and the SKS, need to… freely float. Cosmoline can cause the pivot to go stuck in the frontwards position and lead to slam fires and a runaway burglarize.
Avoid that by making sure it's very clean!
Reassemble the gun, perform a functions test to make certain that everything feels correct and is operating correctly, and y'all're basically done!
Parting Shots
Information technology'south worth noting that we didn't become SUPER deep with our cleanup chore on the two in-house Type 56s every bit they're already pretty thoroughly trashed.
Any their history was with the PLA prior to being locked in the goo grave for an indeterminate amount of time, they certainly weren't babied.
And so we essentially got just enough cosmoline out of them to brand them rubber to fire and left it at that.
Equally expected, one time we really got them out to the desert, they had simply a tiny bit more than grease to leak out from weird places as the procedure of shooting warms up places non easily accessed by brush or rag, simply so information technology goes!
Consider this just a primer on how you might tackle a cosmoline cleanup task, only in that location are tons of ways to go nigh it.
If you've got some super-secret method that y'all swear by, get ahead and yell about information technology in the comment section below. For some more cool quondam guns, accept a look at our Walther P1 — a much cleaner and easier milsurp.
Source: https://www.pewpewtactical.com/cosmoline-removal-guide/
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