Removing old dried cosmoline

[siegersallee]

Hi all,

I have removed old dried cosmoline from Mosin-Nagants with good results using mineral spirits.

I have literally put each metal part that needed colsmoline exorcism into a tray of mineral spirits and let it soak for 24 hours.

I then remove from the tray, lightly rinse with warm water, and immediately dry with cotton rags. After that, I get more clean cotton rags and Q-Tips to get anything still left.

However, for WWI lugers, I am unsure of the best way other than using thousands of Q-Tips and Hopps 9 Cleaner and 2-3 hours tedious cleaning.

Though the mineral spirits does not seem to harm the finish on Mosin-Nagants, I am hesitant to use the same technique on rare lugers with significantly more value.

Is there a better (faster) way than going over all the innards with Q-Tips to remove the old, dried, black, and very dirty cosmoline?

I do completely disassemble and clean all lugers that come my way. But it is really time consuming.


Thanks,
Richard