I placed mine inside my storage shed, which on a summer day will bake anything placed inside it. Doing this allows the wood to sweat all the cosmoline out of it. The wooden stock can be placed in a trash bag and stored somewhere hot. Cleaning these parts will be a chore, so it’s good to loosen up the cosmoline and give yourself a break. For maximum effectiveness, leave them to soak overnight. Take all the little parts like the trigger group, bolt and firing pin and place them in a pan filled with mineral spirits. The firing pin channel and firing pin should be made perfectly clean. You can take notes and photograph everything during disassembly to help you reassemble everything later. You want to get all of the small parts off and separated for cleaning. Sorry, an error occurred and we could not sign you up.ĭisassemble the bolt, remove the magazine assembly, pull the trigger group, pop off the gas tube assembly and remove the bayonet. ![]() Just make sure to align your punches correctly and use tape, towels or other buffers to prevent surface damage to the gun. The cosmoline will be in all the joints and cracks, so pushing pins out might be harder than normal. Fortunately, the SKS isn’t hard to tear down. Once the first wipe down is complete, disassemble the rifle. There will be plenty of time to detail clean later, believe me. Don’t spend too much time wiping it down, just remove the globs of surface accumulation. Next, fill the spray bottle with the mineral spirits and start spraying down the rifle and wipe off all the easily removed cosmoline. In the author’s experience, mineral spirits do not damage the wooden stock or gun. Mineral spirits strip away cosmoline from milsurp rifles. Residual cosmoline can cause malfunctions or damage to the gun and shooter.įirst, get all the materials: paper towels or old rags, cotton swabs, a spray bottle, odorless mineral spirits, gloves for working with chemicals, a pan, a garbage sack and, if it’s 100 degrees Fahrenheit outside and you are cleaning up your gun in the garage like me, then you will want a big bottle of water to stay hydrated. Disassemble the SKS all the way down to clean it properly. If you do it right, however, removing cosmoline preservatives can be easier than expected. It might just be the hardest challenge to returning the gun to a useable state. Removing all of that cosmoline is the first chore to accomplish. So, the obvious goals of acquiring a military surplus gun are cleaning the rifle up, getting it to function, and seeing if your gun has any cool or rare historical value. Its thick, sticky feeling seems to come off on your hands but never actually comes off the rifle, somehow. If you’ve ever picked up a gun covered in it, you know the struggle. ![]() If you ask me, cosmoline is the grossest-feeling substance on planet earth. This gooey grease-like substance called cosmoline preserves milsurp guns, like this SKS, for decades and in all kinds of environments. The milsurp experience is getting in a gun like the SKS that has been used by a military and then was boxed up in storage, usually in large wooden crates, and the guns are dipped in a preservative called cosmoline. The challenge I’m referring to is what I call the “milsurp experience”. ![]() To be honest, I think I almost loved the challenge of cleaning and restoring the SKS more than the SKS itself. And while the milsurp market is not what it used to be, I soon found myself eyeing an SKS rifle I saw for sale. Getting all of the cosmoline off of your SKS can be a tough job, but the end result is definitely worth the time and work.īut somewhere along the way, my better sense took over and I began to appreciate the history and charm of these “old” rifles. After all, what purpose would some old beat-up war rifle serve in a self-defense situation in modern America? So guns like the Mosin-Nagant rifle and under-appreciated SKS never really appealed to me. But I remember a not-so-distant past where I looked down on “old” military surplus (or “milsurp” as they are often known) guns. Ever cleaned the cosmoline out of an SKS rifle? In today’s article, we demonstrate a straightforward way of cleaning up a Type 56 carbine and simplifying the cosmoline removal process.Īs a lover of guns, I aspire to collect pretty much all of them.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |