I used Murphys orange oil soap and a toothbrush. Straight from the bottle. Scrub it and the dirt and grime will come off. Then rub in Howards feed and wax. Ace Hardware has the Howards. A little goes a long way. (follow the directions)
I have had good luck using plain old spray on carbeurator cleaner to remove oil, old varnish finishes and cosmoline. Also works well to de-grease parts....John
Oven cleaner...the trick is to only let it set for about 5 min. then scrub off in a bucket of water,,hair dryer dry an repeat in spots where needed...I've done sever including this tiger stripe....when I got it it was almost BLACK....oven off, then again in several spots until all oil an gunk was removed, after that soaked in soaking wet towels for 6 hours, then with a wet towel over the wood used a iron to steam all the dent an dings out (a BUNCH!!!) then dryed an light sand, an refinsh.
Resurrecting this thread, has anyone used a refinishing stripper to clean out cosmolene? I have used this on antique furniture, so I can't imagine it would be too harsh for a gunstock.