doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Oil soaked stock and forearm.

I've tried Easy Off. It will remove the oil in the stock, it keeps weeping oil for a while, and you have to remove it. I can't tell any damage to the stock, but then the stock I used it on was a P 14 Enfield, and it had LOTS of grease in it. It looked fine for a miltary rifle.

How it would work on a fine gun, I don't know. I think you'd have to do a lot of work on regaining the grain of the stock and possibly filling the pores. But as for removing grease and oil, it does a fine job.

If it's really oil soaked, and not just dirty externally, I don't think you have much choice but to remove the wood and get the oil out. Eventually, the wood will become soft and punky and much more prone to splitting from recoil. It isn't a very big deal to remove the wood on most guns.

I usually start with a scrubbing with household ammonia because ammonia will turn the oils into a soap which is water soluble. Rinse this mess off with plenty of hot water and allow the wood to dry before solvent soaking. This gets a lot of crud out in the beginning. By doing this first step with cheap ammonia, you get more mileage out of expensive solvents.

As PA24 notes, oil bleed can be a problem because the oil is often deeply impregnated into the wood. I've done some very bad ones with low oven heat with the wood wrapped in paper towels followed by solvent soaks until I thought the oil was gone. If I set the wood aside for several weeks and then get back to it for further repairs or refinishing, I sometimes find more oil has migrated to the surface. Because of this, I think it's best to do any crack glueing as quickly as possible after the solvent is evaporated.

As an experiment I once put a gun stock in the dish washer. It came out very clean and bleached looking ,but stained down well.Not a thing I would recommend except in certain circumstances ,plus the grief I got from my wife about the smell of oil that lingered in the machine for days.

treblig1958, there is no way to remove all of the oil from the wood without disassembly. None, nada, neyt. Sorry. 30 years of refinishing gunstocks for others has revealed inletting of older guns can be stubborn and "hold" oil for a long time. Some even get tougher than PA24's time line. I have just finished a Blair SxS which took four months to stop bleeding oil in the head area. Each time I thought it was gone...black spots reappeared. One just has to keep at it until it is gone.

I have done the acetone soak on MANY guns. Maybe it was wrong, but there are so many that I did and in 10yrs. I see no damage under the Tru-Oil finish I applied as soon as I could. I have a tub I bought from the Dollar General that I can place the stocks in. Fill up the remained areas with more small plastic containers so I don't need to buy as much acetone and let them soak. Drain off all the old oily acetone, to reuse for other projects and do a final soak in new, clean acetone. I am happy with my results.

I have had good luck scrubbing with Murphys Oil Soap before soaking. Gets a lot of the dirt and a fair amount of the finish off. Scrub the checkering with a toothbrush.
CHAZ

Genelang:
That's a good point and I tend to use oven cleaner on military riles more than any others because there's usually a combination of deep oils and cosmolene you're dealing with and they can be hard to get out. I've never had a problem after the fact with oven cleaner. If this was a problem just imagine the effect it would have on you with any missed residue in your oven after cleaning!
Jim

Thanks gentlemen, that's what I was afraid of, disassembly. I'm going to try and clean the outside with Murphy's oil soap first and if that doesn't work take it to a gunsmith for cleaning. I remember taking apart a gun this old before and ended up with buggered screws. I'll pay the bill if I have too letting someone else take it apart.

An old post but I thought I'd add my new experience with Murphys Oil used to clean up furniture on old guns.



Picture taken just after I walked out of the gunshop.

About a month ago I bought a W. Richards 12 gauge side lever. (Ok, I know it's not a Westley Richards but it was complete, solid, locked up tight on face, matching numbers and looks to me like Birmingham proof marks. And the price was right.)

I haven't done anything with it but today I took it over to the gun club as a show and tell. One old curmudgeon told me to use Murphys Oil to clean the crud off the wood. I tried it this afternoon and was amazed at the results. I used burlap cloth on the thick spots, a fiber bristle brush on checkering and scrubbed hard with old terrycloth rag.

Hanging the stock in an oven and slowly bringing the temp up will pull out any deep in oil. I had one that the oil was running out of the head and left a puddle on the sheet under the stock.

I only do this if multiple acetone soaks does not remove the oil and it continues to come to the surfsce.