Anyone with a trashcan cosmoline oven for rent?

[Agent Akin]

Okay, so I just got a new hex receiver Mosin in, and hole-y-crap is it coated in cosmoline! I thought my first Mosin was bad but this is insane!

I cleaned my last one by leaving it out on my balcony on several plus one hundred degree days... I don't have a dishwasher, the sink in my apartment is really too small to work with a rifle this big, I can't run a hose from my water heater and do it in my driveway since I have neither, I don't think splashing around buckets of mineral spirits and boiling water on the floor of my living room, even with papers under it, is a good idea... my options are just limited.

While my balcony is tiny, there was room to leave the broken-down rifle out.

Anyways, with this new one, it's obviously not going to be sufficiently hot out for a while... and frankly I just don't have the time to screw with it (I'm currently working seven days a week... the checks are nice but my life sucks until this madness ends).

So... does anyone in LA-ish regions have one of those trashcan ovens that I can rent? Or even better, from my point of view, does anyone have the time, room and/or facilities to just clean it for me, for reasonable compensation (cash/beer/pizza/ammo...)

I would much rather not leave it like this until summer...

Thanks!

[marksmandowntown]

Put newspaper down on your patio and then put the disassembled rifle down on top of that. Then get as much cosmo off with plain paper towels as you can. When you get down to just the greasy wood and metal, spray the **** out of it with WD-40 and wipe the remaining cosmo off. This will work for the big stuff, but you will have a lot of goop in your nooks and crannies. For this you can use a toothbrush dipped in mineral spirits or super hot water. You are going to want a heapton of paper towels and some cloth rags and some plastic bags to throw all the goopy stuff into.

Please post a pic of the cleaned up rifle when you are done.

[Enfield47]

Please post a pic of the cleaned up rifle when you are done.

Lets see a before and after pic. Grendel got an SKS that was cosmo bombed pretty heavily, we should start a pic thread of the rifles with the most cosmo on them.

[shda5582]

I've been looking for another project since I just finished up my Mosin. PM me and maybe we can work something out.

[Lexicon Devil]

A couple other remedies that I've used:
#placed the stock in the oven
#heat gun
#simple green/toothbrush on metal parts
#place barrel/parts in the bath tub and pour hot water over them

[Tom-ADC]

Mineral spirits worked as well as any thing for me, gallon of MS, bucket, a throw away paint brush, will work wonders and for me hasn't striped the aged shellac finish.

[BigJ]

No time? No space? No problem.

1) go buy a 12 pack of the cheapest paper towels you can find
2) go buy a box of large black trash bags
3) pull the action from the wood
4) grab a roll of paper towels and use them to literally scrape as much of the cosmo off the wood and metal as you can

Time check? Maybe 1/2hr so far

5) wrap the wood in more towels than you think is reasonable. Seriously, maybe 1/2 a roll.
6) wrap the action in more towels than you think is reasonable. Seriously, maybe 1/2 a roll.
7) put both in a garbage bag and seal it shut
8) when you get to work, find an all-day sunny spot to park, roll up all the windows and leave the bag on the dash
9) when you get home that night, open the bag, use the towels to wipe everything you can away, remove the parts and toss the bag of rags.
10) Repeat steps 5-9, decreasing the wrap until the papertowels come away clean-ish. Probably gonna take a few days for the metal and maybe a week worth of cycles for the wood.

Time check? Maybe 15 minutes a day.

11) Now set the wood and metal aside until you have time to take it all apart and clean as you normally would.

Job done

[n2fasthondas]

Take it to an engine machine shop and have them put it in the hot tank. I did it on an sks and cleaned up nice. I was afraid it would hurt the blueing but not at all. Turned out great. Charged me 15 dollars. Make sure they put it in the aluminum cleaners as they use less aggressive degreasers. The iron one is caustic and may damage the blue.

[cgates]

harbor freight heat gun - $10
turkey roasting pan - pennies

take it all apart and blast the metal with heat, letting the cosmo drip into the pan. wipe with a rag soaked in some mineral spirits.

let the stock sit in the sun and wipe it off every half hour as the cosmo seeps out of it.

this is the cleanest method I have found.

a dozen rolls of paper towels? not for me...

[Vee3]

The metal is fairly easy but after using multiple methods, I've found this the most effective for the stock after removing excess gunk down to bare wood...

Wrap the stock with ~20 layers of dollar store paper towels and (this is key) tightly wrap over it with tape. I use clear packing tape. It's important to have the paper in full contact with the wood for max absorption. Place in oven (with door open, one end sticking out) on lowest setting until the towels are saturated. Swap ends of stock into oven to get both ends. Cut towels off and wipe stock down with acetone. Repeat until towels do not absorb much oil (to get 100% out would probably take forever).

Whatever you do, don't let anyone convince you to use Brownell's "Whiting Compound" to remove oils from a stock. It's a friggin' messy disaster.

[Agent Akin]

So, nobody has a metal trashcan cosmoline removing oven they'd be willing to rent out? Dangit, a few years ago there were huge threads about them...

Oh well. This thing'll likely be sitting in in its box until summer... I'm not even going to try to splash around buckets of chemicals and stuff even with papers covering the carpets...

[nothinghere2c]

just wipe off the excess with a rag...

take it out and shoot it as fast as you can operate the bolt for about 50 rounds

it will melt off

[Agent Akin]

Hah! This would be the "wrap self with paper towels" option, for protection against all the cosmoline flying about? :-D

[nothinghere2c]

i did it with mine, it just kinda bubbled and melted off (smoking of course)