Just Oiled Up My Mosins

It's been about a year since I took the Mosin-Nagants out for a spin, and they've been sitting there on the rack while I've been building (and testing, of course!) my AK collection. Last Friday while I was looking at them I peered into the muzzle of one and saw a spot of frosting, and I thought I'd better not leave these in the rack to rust. Then it hit me - motor oil. I took them out one by one, and lifted the barrel and action out of the stock and rubbed them down with a light film of motor oil, then ran a patch with oil through the bore, replaced the stocks, and put them back in the rack. I feel much better now knowing my friends will be safe and protected until I'm ready to clean and fire them again.

I hate you!..ur mosins fare better under benign neglect than mine do after 500 lashes with a nylon broosh and JB bore cleaner..arrrrrgh!

Whereabouts do you live, Swabbie? I'm just outside of New Orleans, and usually we have really bad humidity. For some reason though since Hurricane Katrina we've been extra dry. I don't know what happened, but maybe that damned hurricane knocked our weather pattern away from us and towards you. Maybe you're getting our humidity.

I'm just north of Jackson,MS .not too far from you .Naah..it's just the bores on both of my Mosins aren'tever gonna come clean.I've tried GI cleaner,JB,Boilin water and about 250 passes thru each.They're as clean as they are gonna get.

Same here Swabb, I've cleaned the dog piss out of my mosins but have yet to get a clean patch. I guess the Russians early 1900's iron production practices left much to be desired. It's like the bore is leaching out impurities left in the steel, sounds good anyways?:huh_small

Dang Swabbie! The wife and I were in Jackson last month to see that "Angels in Medieval Art" exhibit. I wish I'd known you were nearby.

Over the past few years I've bought Mosin Nagants when I found good deals, and now I have 16 of them. Of that number 4 have bright shiny bores, 10 more have dark bores with strong rifling and good crowns, and 2 have bad bores with pitting and worn throats / crowns. Only the four with good bores give me clean patches. The rest all give up crap when I clean them even if they were clean to start with.

Poor swab....the curse of the dirty bore....told ya,,,Sjohnson convinced me about a year and a 1/2 ago that those old bores were never going to come really clean....just go for the light grey patch and oil er down buddy.... :D

You still havent tried the Jasco Primer in the bore? Im telling you it will work.

I havent steered you wrong before have I?

This thread got me thinking, and last night after the wife went to sleep I went out to the shop with one of those "Cracked-stock" Mosins from Century. This one was shellacked so poorly that the stuff had pooled in spots on the wood, and it had cracked off in other spots leaving an ugly white residue. Been wanting to clean that one up for a long time, so I grabbed a can of acetone and a rag and started on the stock. Getting all that crap off is pretty tough, but the wood underneath looks so nice that it's really worth it. I must have scrubbed it for an hour and only got about 1/3 of it done. This is going to take a few sessions I guess.

OK Akajun,,,nope you haven't ever steered me wrong podno.what is it and where do I find it?

Couldn't find sweets here.2 more gun shops here,but way the hell and gone from my house.

MY Rifle..holler next time ur up this way!Last time I was in N'awlins was 6 weeks b4 Katrina.Fond memories.

Jasco is phosporic acid primer, also called rust converter, prime and prep. SOld at Home Depot and Lowes as Jasco Prime and Prep, or as other paint stores under such names as Ospho, Phoso, but they are all the same thing.


This stuff will take off bluing so be carefull.

Put in a spray bottle and get a funnel with a piece of small tubing on the end that will fit in the chamber.
take your gun out of the stock point the muzzle down, put the funnel tubing in the chamber and squirt some in the funnel till it comes dripping out of the barrell pretty good. Let the stuff work for a bout 15 minutes keeping the barrel pointing down the whole time. Then clean with hoppes #9 and a brush then with warm soapy water, then agian with hoppes #9 till the patches come out clean. Then oil. It will work, will not remove pitts but will get out all the rusted in funk from in the pitts. This will get the bore on a mosin as clean as it will ever be.


BTW Im working on getting you some scrap lead, if you still want it. Youll just have to pay for the shipping or come get it.

thanks for the info..gotta go to Home Desperate for lumber this week,so I'll look for it.

Yeah I'll gladly pay shipping on lead..70 lbs will fit in USPS priority flat rate...my postal lady hates me :laugh_sma

So far I got melting pot,cast iron muffin pan,bottom pour pot.My ladles are MIA somewheres between Left coast and here :skull_cro .constructin a castin cart from my old gas grill and one side burner.

got one silly old Lee c309-180 mould.Probably gonna buy a Lee C312-155R until both of my custom Lee 6 bangers get here.

My-rifle: I've used Easy-off oven cleaner on a couple of stocks, it does a fine job on lacquer. Remove stock and all metal parts. Spray down stock on both sides with the oven cleaner, let foam and soak for 30 minutes. Take to a large sink or garden hose and rinse while scrubbing with scotch bright pad. After two sessions you will have minimal lacquer left on stock. You will be able to see the outcome better when the stock dries after rinsing.

Thanks for the advice Mosinnutty. I'll try that on the next one I do. I finished getting the shellac off last week, and now I'm putting on the Tru-Oil. Damn! This looks Great! What's funnt though is that this is the test-case gun. The stock has a splice in it near the muzzle, and the bore is godawful. That's why I chose it for the Tru-Oil experiment. When I'm finished though it's going to be the best-looking rifle in my milsurp collection.

Last year I reworked an M44 stock using tung oil, but at coat #8 the oil went on and dried sort of pimply. I could snd them down, but then the finish looked terrible. I let it dry, then tried again, and the next coat dried pimply too. I tried this a few times with variations, but it always came out the same way. It still pains me to shoot that gun. I'm hoping the Tru-Oil will work better.

Your welcome. When I first got into re-finishing gun stocks I used polyurethane varnish and or shellac. These both produced a great looking stock but both had hours of dry time and runs were difficult to remove. Then a friend told me about Tru-Oil. Wow! I didn't know what I had been missing. The first Tru-Oil I purchased was from a gun shop, and came in a spray can that you applied like spray paint. When that ran out all I could find were the small bottles like Walmart sales. I was reluctant at first to apply the Tru-Oil with a cloth like they recommend, but as it turned out I found that using a cloth produces the best results. I usually end up with 3 to 4 coats rubbing down with 00 steel wool in between then leaving the last coat as is with a coat of carnuba wax. I found that the secret to a good finish is having good lighting during the application and also a clean environment to work in. With two women and a dog in the house, hair is my enemy. :sad_small

Yeah, I know what you mean. I had to rub off a couple coats, because I hadn't cleaned the dust from the previous coat well enough. I'm on coat #6 right now. I'm trying to fill in the grain. I suppose that's a bit more than is necessary. Another important thing I learned: Use very thin coats. Thicker coats may allow the oil to run. I'm going to try to find some stock wax tonight after work.

Guys --- Stay away from Oven Cleaner. This stuff is nasty harsh and horrible on your wood. All sorts of nasty chemicals will get into the wood using this which can cause some issues down the line. There are other ways to remove a finish - easy off is a bad idea.

I've had great luck with ACE hardware paste paint remover. Usually works in one application and doesn't beat up the wood. A light steel wool between applications of 1/2 satin and 1/2 semi gloss poly and the rifles are beautiful. I've tried a number of Spar varnishes but have never been happy with the results though I guess that would be a lot more orginal.

I have enough Mosins that one or two more or less, that keeping it original isn't my goal. On the other hand, a shellac wood coating is completely out of the question. Hell, I don't even believe that it was the original finish put on the stocks. Shellac is too delicate to survive any battle use. No, I want a beautiful gun, and I want to preserve the markings, so any significant sanding is out of the question.

Gunboards, I read up on oven-cleaner, and it seems that it leaves behind a chemical residue that can discolor the wood a year or two after the wax seals the beautiful wood. I guess that one's off the table. I may have to stick to denatured alcohol. It only took a few hours work to get the shellac off, and it preserved all the markings, and it didn't damage the wood in any way that I can see.

Shellac - This was the correct finish and was started on the M91 rifles. The Russian records on this show it to be the case and if one sees original rifles or carbines in the various museums there shellac is the finish. Shellac is more durable than many people think and recall the shellac added on these later reworks was done without much care as the rifles were going right into storage. I have some Finnish capture rifles that still show shellac so it can stand up. The Finns used varnish on many of their rifles - also not seen as durable but seems to have
done the job.

Oven cleaner: Yes.... I was told about it a number of years ago by a wood worker so I took him at his word at it. He told me this was about the worst stuff one could add to wood.

Can you show us the records about shellac? I'd genuinely like to see them, because I've heard people state this position and the contrary with complete certainty. I have also tried to hunt with a shellac-covered MN, and the stuff came right off. I can't imagine why the Russians would choose shellac on their M91/30s and M44s when other wood treatments like BLO were available and much more effective.

Son of a #$*!,:cry_small Guess I should have investigated the oven cleaner deal a little closer. I'm glad I only did one stock with it. Guess I'll go back to sanding off the shellac. Thanks for the info Gun boards!

it has been over a year since I used oven cleaner on my No 4 Enfield stock..no problems yet.I'm not sayin there won't be any,but stock still looks beautiful.Maybe the different wood is responsible?

it has been over a year since I used oven cleaner on my No 4 Enfield stock..no problems yet.I'm not sayin there won't be any,but stock still looks beautiful.Maybe the different wood is responsible?

That's the funny thing about the internet. You never know who;s telling the truth.

Can you show us the records about shellac? I'd genuinely like to see them, because I've heard people state this position and the contrary with complete certainty. I have also tried to hunt with a shellac-covered MN, and the stuff came right off. I can't imagine why the Russians would choose shellac on their M91/30s and M44s when other wood treatments like BLO were available and much more effective.

As for the records - Well if you go with me to Russia the next time you can see them (smile) I can say the director of the Artillery and Sappers Museum, the Red Army Museum, and others all state shellac. I also know in looking at untouched original rifles that one sees shellac. When you see some of the Finnish captures that were not reworked just put back in service you can also see shellac. I at one time had a factory proof rifle from 1899 - a proof rifle being a rifle made as a standard for that years production - and it was also shellaced. This rifle had never been updated or refurbed - having the early rear sight, no sling slots in the wood, early magazine sling attachment, and other early features. The rifle had no serial numbers as it was a factory proof rifle and was just as made in 1899.

Shellac is not going to come off that easy if a high grade is used and put on with care. As can be seen with Finnish captured Soviet arms - be these Mosins or SVT's - in a lot of cases the shellac can still be found. This after going through a war. The shellac used in these later reworks was a poor grade and slopped on. The rifles and carbines were out of service and just stored so no real care was given to them.

BLO was very popular in the West but not so much in other nations. The Finns used linseed oil then applied varnish later - this also can be seen in the factory records of SAKO and VKT as stored in their national archives. BLO was not used all that much outside of British and the US military. I do agree that BLO and other such finish types are better than shellac but that is sort of beside the point as both the Russian-Soviets and Finns went with this sort of stock finish.

"' and the contrary with complete certainty"
I would say those that start the contrary have not seen many original rifles and are basing their opinion on incomplete information. In Russia there is not a debate at all in regards to the finish type as they all seem to know shellac was the standard.

This is good information. Thanks for posting it.

I'm afraid I won't be going with you to Russia. My Cuban wife despises the country that enslaved her people, and she has strictly forbidden me from going there. She barely puts up with my interest in their firearms. The Russians brought a lot of resentment on themselves when they invaded so many peoples. The Czechs, the Germans, the Cubans - everywhere I've traveled in the former eastern bloc the people hate Russians. Too bad too. The Russians make such great art, music, literature - and guns.

Dont get your panties in a knot about easy offoven cleaner. Its a lye based product which means it is bad if you leave it on wood. But!!! you dont leave it on!!! It also has a degreaser in it. it works great used just like the first post on it stated. 2 applications, brillo with a new pad(soapy) between and after and rinse well in water. Then let it dry at least 24 hours. steam the dents up with a wet cloth and iron. then scrape the stock with a single edge razor blade. you'll be amazed! you just took off oil and varnish and any easy off that leached into the wood! Then sand using a backing pad of felt or rubber or whatever allows you to follow the contour and not destroy the shape. Go in steps 120 , 180, 220. until it is smooth. then stain and finish. Want to be original use shellac, or blo. Want to be smart use spar exterior satin urethane. The only reason it wasn't used back then is they didn't have it! Heard of any boat finishes getting gummywhen they got damp? Also the beech wood and others are soft. the urethane will give you a hard topcoat to keep that stock looking good. Use rubber gloves and be safe the lye will burn you. Chief C&R :angel_sma Nagant fireball lover !

The thing about Easy-Off for me is this: There have been reports that several years after using it it the chemicals that seeped into the wood will begin gradually to react with the organic element in the wood to turn it dark and blotchy. For me, since I know that denatured alcohol works with a rag (no razor necessary) and three hours rubbing, why take the chance with oven cleaner?