I bought a 1903 many years ago and never did much with it.  I did get an unissued stock for it from Numrich arms.   I only remember shooting it once.  With time on my hands I thought about dealing with the situation. The metal parts are covered with a dried crusty gunk that has resisted my gentle efforts to remove.  Does cosmoline dry out?  Is brake cleaner still effective on this dried crap?  Thanks.

It does, brake clean still works fine. I have found some elbow with rags works well too and so does a blow gun on an air compressor for the bulk stuff.

I really like oderless mineral spirits for cleaning up cosmoline.  It just melts the gooey stuff away.

But I'm not so sure how well it will work on the old caked on stuff you're looking at.   Still,  l would give it a try of it were me.

A heat gun works well too.

I had a differential gear for my GPW that was coated in about 1/2" of cosmo.  Heat-gun toothbrush and brake cleaner and a lot of time cleaned it up nice.

Lots of stuff out there with the label of " Cosmolene" .

I never worked out if it is different stuff , different age , different conditions or whatever . I do know that what works to remove some stuff doesn't begin to touch some of the other stuff.

Mineral spirts works well in many cases , brake cleaner works ok when soft but fails badly on some of the harder stuff.

I bought a cheepy steam cleaner that worked wonders on a old Enfield.

Try a bunch of different stuff is the best advise I can give you.

You spoke of a "new" stock. Don't toss the old one , history and all that stuff. Any original wood no matter how beat up is what the historical value guys are interested in. You might be surprised
how old wood cleans up , try to avoid sandpaper . If you decide to go with the new wood at the very least toss the old stock set in the back of a closet or gun safe for the future.


Also , we here really get off on before /after photo sets . Seeing the gun all cleaned up is cool but take the time to take a photo series with all its crusty nasty before looks

Thanks for the replies.

For cleaning up parts like that I keep a few of those com block spam cans, empty of course.
And I keep cans of solvents in hand like mineral spirits, acetone and laqure thinner.
So I'll soak them in what ever seems to be cutting the gunk.
I also have a dunk can of shitty carb cleaner that doesn't work as well as it should.

Denatured alcohol will dissolve dried oil and grease.

If it is the black tar like cosmoline... soak in mineral spirits. That stuff is a pain to remove.

Carb cleaner is too aggressive and may effect parkerizing.

Spray it with Wipe Out foaming bore cleaner and wait a few minutes - it will start breaking down and will come off with a tooth brush really easy.
It removed what I thought were permanent stains in the park on several guns.