Thread: Removal of Cosmoline

If this is not the appropriate thread, please redirect me. Does anyone know how to remove cosmoline from carbon steel? My son has a torc of woven metal strands. It will require scrubbing in many hard to get at areas. Preferably, he'd like to use something that won't remove the patinea. I thought some of the gun enthusiasts on the forums might know. Thanks, much.

I would say mineral spirits.

Well i might be all wrong because i do not know for 100% what is cosmoline in Finnish.
For what i know that most hard-to-remove waxes, rust presentatives, gun oils, mc chain waxes, lubricants etc can be removed with kerosene or diesel fuel oil.

cosmoline soaks into wood/ metal or really anything it's applied to , so what you need to do is wipe it down with either a gun cleaner ( i like rem oil ) or mineral spirits depending on what it is that you're cleaning .. then put the part in a plastic bag size permitting and put it outside in the heat for a day or two , you see that cosmoline will have seeped out of the pores . Repeat this process until it's clean ( I did a SKS and a mosin nagant this way )
"We can sew"........."you can sew , if only we had know that earlier"

Mineral spoirits will work, so will almost any petroleum distillate(fuel) diesel,kerosene etc.

If it is all metal, just boil it until the cosmoline comes off.

Yep, soaking in mineral spirits and heating. with a rifle stock I did both; and wrapping the stock in layers of paper towels then putting it into a black trash bag and setting it out in your car on a hot day really helps...