I just aquired a nice little 94 Swede carbine from a guy who said it had been his father's and had not been fired in many years. All matching numbers and appears to be in mechanically great shape.

Here are my questions: 1)what would be the best way to clean up the stock without harming the collector value? 2)how do I get all the cosmoline and dried oil and grease off the action? I tried using Gunscrubber which took the oil off but was very slow and required several applications just to get the bolt shroud cleaned up.

Geronimo

All kinds of answers and advice at www.milsurpshooter.net

Also, for cosmoline removal I recommend a steam cleaner. Probably not worth it if you'll only do 1 and won't find another use for it (works great on grills, car parts, old steering wheels, etc).

All the steam cleaners have scary write-ups on the web, but I picked up an Ultra Steam Shark II to do a few CMP Springfields, and it's holding up okay 1 year or so later.

Steve

I have done the mil surp clean up many times now. If you want to get cosmoline off the stock and metal there is a little trick I learned on surplusrifle.com. Go to the articles section and type in cosmoline, it's some good affordable ideas. After baking the cosmoline out at low heat a run through a dishwasher will often lift some of the bumps and light dings in the stock. Using a combo of low heat and some solvent will work on the metal too. I have used the trash can "easy bake oven" and would say it's the best for everything. The steam cleaner works also but is a bit messier for the operator. Hope that helps and Merry Christmas.

My brother was in the automotive machine shop business at one time. He would remove the action from the stock and run them both thru a cycle in his pressure washer/steam cleaner cabinet, the same device that he used to clean and degrease engine blocks and cylinder heads. When he told me that I thought he was freakin' nuts, but it worked great, and the wood came out clean and undamaged!

quote:

Originally posted by Geronomo:
I just aquired a nice little 94 Swede carbine from a guy who said it had been his father's and had not been fired in many years. All matching numbers and appears to be in mechanically great shape.

Here are my questions: 1)what would be the best way to clean up the stock without harming the collector value? 2)how do I get all the cosmoline and dried oil and grease off the action? I tried using Gunscrubber which took the oil off but was very slow and required several applications just to get the bolt shroud cleaned up.

Geronimo

I use mineral spirits & a brush or steel wool(#0000) on the wood and all metal works great

I’ve used a coin operated car wash wand successfully on mil-surp barreled actions, which is sort of a poor man’s equivalent to what craigster mentioned. Didn’t try it on the stocks, but it would probably work to get the surface gunk off so you could then use something better to suck the grease and oil up and out of the wood.

I soaked the barreled actions real well in Simple Green, brushed it around good with a wire brush, then carted them over to the car wash and just blasted the hell out of them with the high pressure hot water and took them back home and blew them out with my air compressor.

Thanks for all the replies guys. Now I have another problem...which one of these methods to try. Maybe I'll give them each a go and see which one works the best. Thanks again and happy holidays everyone!

Geronimo