Cleaning up heavily oil laden, dark, dirty wood.

I had a m1 garand stock that was black, and oozed oil in direct sunlight. 3 Trips throught the dish washer on pots and pans with sunlight and, presto, its a nice walnut after all! (the heat from the dry cycle even raised some of the dents) Wish I'd taken a few before and after pictures. Oh, don't let your wife catch you, thats important...........:redface:
 
IF you use the dishwasher (I can't endorse this method - too risky) do NOT use the dry cycle!!!! The head can warp your stock at best, or at worst, crack it.

IF you use the risky method, air dry it in the sun on a summer day. Then let sit for a week at least before oiling it.

A better "water method" is this:

Mixt up some TSP (Tri-Sodium Phosphate) soap (from cdn tire) with VERY hot water. Use a stiff bristly brush and lightly scrub the stock with the solution. Let sit wet for a few minutes and wipe dry with paper towel. Repeat. Avoid cartouches if possible.

Takes a few applications but this WILL leech all the oil out eventually. You can then lighly remove any fuzz with fine steel wool, wipe down with clean cloth and re-oil. The wood will look DEAD before oiling, but all the color will come back once it gets a drink :)
 
I have seen stocks that were put through a vapour phase degreaser. Don't know if these devices are still used - they are a tank with boiling solvent in the bottom, and cooling coils higher up, so there is a cloud of distilled solvent vapour above the liquid solvent. The work is suspended in the vapour layer, where the solvent condenses, drains, and continually degreases the item. I've used one in the plating shop of an auto electric plant on baskets of steel parts, prior to them being phosphated or plated. The stocks went through a different one in an electric motor shop. The results were incredible - oil soaked, blackened, battered stocks went it, the stocks came out battered, but the wood looked near new. Remarkable transformation. Now this was years ago, and I do not know if these units are still in use, whether they would be environmentally acceptable. Volatile solvents are suspect nowadays. If you are near an industrial area, it might be worth calling plating or electric motor rewinding shops, and see if access to one of these machines could be arranged.
 
Best stay out of trouble with the wife and don't bother with the dishwasher :rolleyes:
Taking your time will be more rewarding for the end results.
Scotchbrite pads and varsol worked well for my clean-ups and I always seem to have a old , holey pair of jeans hanging around which I'll use for rags to wipe off the gunk .
 
Cleaning a stock

I take the dual method: first, I clean the stock in a pail of paint cleaner (Varsol or equivalent), wipe everything dry and do it again about three times.
Then I use very hot TSP with a medium-soft brush on the imbedded grease. I don protection gloves, glasses and apron for this because hot, concentrated TSP is nasty on the eyes and skin.
Once this is done, I pour boiling fresh water on the wood, wipe it and roll it in towels to allow it to dry slowly.
Once the wood is dry, it will look grey and lifeless.
I use a pad of 000 steel wool to get the whiskers off it. Once done, I pass a pad saturated with isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alcohol is fine) on the wood.
This will finish raising the wood whiskers and I use a 0000 steel wool pad to smooth the surface.
After a good vacuuming and a tack cloth, you'll be able to begin treating that wood with a diluted solution of the recommended protection for the wood: BLO for the British and US rifles, pine tar, suet and turpentine or turpentine, beeswax and BLO for the Finn Mosins, shellack for Russians, etc...
Good luck!
PP.
 
Send your wife / girlfriend out for a night with the girls...

Remove rifle from stock
turn grill element on in over (you know the top one)

Move oven shelf to top or second shelf
Have two or three rolls of paper towel near-by
and a bucket for garbage

Get that sucker hot and start wiping
Alternatively you can do this with a BBQ

Make sure you air the house out
get out the Frebreeze and make things smell nice

This method really works.
I have found that oven cleaner also works quite well as an after treatment but do not believe it is required after going through the oven / BBQ process.

Here is a link for you

Goodluck

EDITTED TO ADD...
Slug is right
I forgot to add
Put some tin foil on a shelf below your wood.
You don't want oil dripping onto a lower element...
 
Last edited:
Removing Oil

I find that Easy-Off oven cleaner is the absolute best.

A word of warning to those using the oven method. Many years back, (late seventies), I used the oven on a rather rough Garand stock. Unknown to me, some of the oil dripped onto the bottom of the oven. Next day, the babysitter pre-heated the oven to start supper. When she opened the oven, ten minutes later, the inrushing air let the oil ignite. No damage was done, but I think that she may have had to change her drawers.

The wife may have forgiven me for that one, but I'll bet that she hasn't forgotten.

If you use the top elements, be careful that you don't scorch the wood. It can happen quite easily.

Again, I find the spray on oven cleaner, the easiest, most consistent and very thorough. It may take two or three treatments, but the stock ends up bone dry and free of grease and oil. Afterwards, I slobber on Tru-Oil and the dry stock just soaks it up. It has a filler and make take several coats. Then I carefully sand off the excess dried Tru-Oil, but just down to the wood and no further, and try to leave the markings intact.
 
I used liquid cascade dishwashing detergent, cut 50/50 with water, rubbed into the stock. let thar sit 15 minutes, rubbed it again, reapplied more detergent, and let it sit 15 more minutes. I rubbed it again, and gave it a twice-over with a power washer.
 
Stay away from the dish washer and water if you can. This is a really bad way to clean stocks despite what others say. If you do have any cracks in the stock these will rapidly widen with water application. Unseen hair line cracks can grow and be a big problem. I used to use water and ammoina but not any more!!!!
Use furniture stripper. It is purpose buillt. The stuff with the date in the title is good (1876 or something)
 
The water method is not recommended for WWII German laminated stocks. The glue was not selected for extended weather-resistence, but immediate functioning.

Don't soak the stock. The idea is to heat up the gunk on the surface so it will flow, wipe or brush off. The hot water means it will also dry itself better.

I have seen comments on other forums about wrapping oily stocks in paper towel and leaving them in locked cars to bake. The paper absords the gooey oils without any intervention.
 
Whiting

There's also a product named "whiting"; it is a powdery absorbent stuff that you mix with a solvent and slop on the wood. The solvent lifts the oils to the surface and the whiting absorbs it, ready to be wiped up; you can also apply the solvent to the wood and sprinkle the powder on top or cover the wood with whiting and bake it to lift the oil to the surface. Any way works.
PP.:)
 
Some more comments. The only laminate German stocks that will delaminate from water are the late-war white glue laminates. The red glue laminates will withstand water just fine.

Be VERY careful with oven cleaner. Some woods will chemically react with it and turn the stock a sh!tty orange color, and it can/will also weaken wood fibre if left on too long. I would use it only on the absolute WOSRT stocks that I couldn't make right any other way.

Bar none, the best method is to wrap in paper towel and allow the greenhouse effect to take hold. I knew a guy once who built a black painted box with a window on top for hot sunny days to treat his stocks. This method, while being the best, takes weeks or even months. That's why it's not very popular.

DO NOT soak a stock in a bin of water. This WILL worsen cracks and raise out your cartouches.

Hot water with or without TSP will work quite well, but don't overdo it! You only want enough hot water to liquify surface oil so the scrub brush will take it off. Let the TSP do its thing to leech the oils out from underneath the wood's surface. Brushing water on is no different than if your stock was rained on. It won't absorb enough water to worsen cracks, etc. This is because you aren't dunking end-grain into a bucket of water ;)

Let any washed stock sit for a week in a dry warm room, just to be safe, before you oil it. You don't want to trap moisture into the stock.

I can't stress this enough though - don't use oven cleaner unless you've exhausted every other method. I've seen some VERY valuable stocks ruined with this stuff FIRST HAND. It will turn mahogany Enfield stocks into useless mush. Some strains of beechwood will come out looking like hairy ####. And also, it can react with some older oil wood finishes too and ruin stock coloration on things like WW1 era USGI 1903 Springfield stocks.
 
Last edited:
Using a dishwasher or oven cleaner will degrade the "collector value" of the stock. In general, stay away from any process involving water for any sort of collectable firearm. Both methods have their place, but not on a historically interesting gun.

I wrap the wood in clean rags, then bake in the oven with a low heat (130-160F). Then, I take the pieces and let them soak in methyl hydrate for 12-24 hours. I then let them "surface dry", and wrap them again, and put them in the oven... Repeat until the oil is out.
 
Plinker said:
Using a dishwasher or oven cleaner will degrade the "collector value" of the stock. In general, stay away from any process involving water for any sort of collectable firearm. Both methods have their place, but not on a historically interesting gun.

I wrap the wood in clean rags, then bake in the oven with a low heat (130-160F). Then, I take the pieces and let them soak in methyl hydrate for 12-24 hours. I then let them "surface dry", and wrap them again, and put them in the oven... Repeat until the oil is out.
Click to expand...

Washing the outside (not a bath) with soapy water won't hurt the piece, just clean it.

If you use the method you outlined below, it's important to note that methyl hydrate is EXTREMELY volatile and flammable. Don't get it on your skin as it absorbs easily (and isn't good for you) and if you put a stock still wet with MH into the oven, even at 130 degrees, it can (and sometimes will) combust. NOT GOOD. Not saying the method doesn;t work, but you should specify that you have to wait for the MH to evaporate off the wood BEFORE baking it, or some enterprising CGN-er will likely burn down their house ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom