I have cleaned two before but never in the manner I want to attempt now.

I have 3 newly purchased Hex's that need to be cleaned. I am going to use mineral spirits, aluminum disposable food trays and the pvc tube method.

My question is :
One of the rifles has orange paint on the rear sight and in some of the stamps. Will putting the painted part in the mineral spirits to soak remove the paint?

I saw in the tacked thread about cleaning that it could possibly happen. Just wondering if anyone can comment further.

Ill get dates and pictures when I home later tonight.

Most likely Mineral spirits will strip most the paint or wax. Most likely it was done by the seller to help make the markings more visible to sell the rifle but, some of the refurbishers did it as well so it would be up to you if you even wanted to worry about saving it.

Mineral Spirits did not remove the orange paint from my sight markings.

Really depends on what kind of paint it is. My 2 mosins were cleaned with mineral spirits. Did a great job on removing cosmo. Even took some on a rag, and wiped down the stocks, before setting them out in the sun. It does an amazing job. Try to figure out what kind of paint it is, then dab a little on it, to see if it gets removed.

I think that is non usa refurb paint. We will see what happens.

I need to wait until spring for warmer days to let the stocks sit out in the sun. I was thinking of putting them close to the wood stove.

this may sound bad...   but it works if you follow it with a real attention to detail clean up...   on the last 2 Mosin i cleaned, to get all the cosmolin off. i did the following:

- take apart the whole rifle...
- put small parts in a tupawar or equivalant container with tight lid
- take everything to the car wash
- soak all parts in the engine degreaser including the stock (fill up tupware container w/degreaser and close lid and shake)
- place barreled action on towel or rubber matt and soak in degreaser on floor
- then with the foaming brush scrub barrel and stock and hand guard down with hot foam...
- then oh high presure soap blast the hell out of everything including the bore and chamber
- then on high presure rinse rinse everything of...
-with a dry towel dry up everything as best as possible and then hall ass home to blow it all out with air compressor

THEN DO A COMPLETE CLEAN UP WITH CLP

- scrub all parts with AP brush and CLP
- punch the bore with bronze brush and CLP
- run dry patch thru bore until clean and then put a light cot of CLP in the bore to preserve until ready to shoot
- wipe up all excess clp and then with several patches and few drops of clp run patch over all metal to leave light coat of CLP to protect all Metal
- Blast the stock with compressed air and leave in sun to dry and wipe any extra cosmolin as the sun warms the stock and releases more cosmo.
or
- steam the stock
or
- use citristrip to strip the stock and then leave in sun oor hot box to dry

if you strip stock then restain and coat with linseed oil...
or give it the finnish of your choice

this procedure really works and even though it sounds like alot of work its really not and it gets the job done quick and leaves more time to go shoot the thing...