The Russian Mosin Nagant Forum

I bought a 1939 Izhevsk last year and a buddy and his son loved it so I bought him a 1943 Iz for his birthday last month. He was really tickled.
When I saw how happy it made him I bought 2 more for my 2 bosses last week.
Tonight my buddy & I took 3 of them (one boss already cleaned his) and had a cleaning party. We separated the wood from the metal, cleaned cosmoline from the metal with mineral spirits and cleaned and oiled the wood.
What a great way to spend a Friday night. I can wait to take all 3 to the range.

That's awesome! I bought a couple for friends too, but I kept them

I actually like cleaning these old rifles and I often do a couple of them at a time. I should probably shoot one of them one of these days lol.

Very cool turkeyoak!

I had to give a rifle to a friend of mine also, he is a pistol shooter with a delicate shoulder so I gave him a SKS. Only way I could get him to upgrade his arsenal.

For the really hardened cosmo that is difficult to remove, try some 3M Adhesive Remover.

It melts it away.

Do not use any kind of solvents were they can get on the wood, shellac is not a very tough stock finish, just about any solvent will harm it.

Yes, we separated wood from metal & cleaned separately. We oiled wood & metal before mating them.
One had the blueing worn off around the bolt and had been painted. The spirits was removing the paint so I took it all off.
I figured we'd be able to keep the metal rust free since it will be a range queen.

There is nothing like the smell of cosmoline in the morning, it smells like victory!

We had a couple of my daughter's friends stay the night. They all passed out in the living room and I crashed in the recliner here in the gun room. I had done some cleaning and oiling of a couple of rifles earlier and there was a strong aroma of Hoppes, RemOil, lemon oil, cosmoline and "history" in the room. I slept pretty well