I picked my gun up last summer, but due to some emergency cardiac surgery, I was not able to get going on it until today.

Man, that gun is covered in old grease or dirt or who knows what else! The barrel was black inside. Today, after a good hour of cleaning, it's showing signs of life. I can see the rifling now, and the bore is starting to shine up. Still dirty, but nothing like it was. It looks like a gun inside.

The bolt was covered in 100 year old grease, I guess. I spend about an hour working on that and getting a lot of it off. Looks shiny now, for the most part. Still have a couple of areas to get to. I'm thinking of soaking the whole thing in some Hoppes #9.

I'm not complaining, mind you. I like working on these old guns, and the time flies by for me. I had other things to do today, but I am looking forward to next weekend when I can work on it some more.

I use kerosene myself. Use it as a soak and then use a variety of brushes and wools while still wet.

For bore cleaning I have been using strands of copper pads from a Chore Boy cleaning pad.  Wrap the strands around a bore brush and it really helps clean the crud out of bores an revolver cylinders.  Be careful to use only the copper pads and not the copper plated steel pads.

Good luck and enjoy your rifle. :)

Ok, now we are making real progress. The bore is nice and shiny and I can see strong rifling. There is still some work to do, but an hour and a half of cleaning today turned it into a real gun!

The wood is also starting to look better- just from rubbing with a rag. Next weekend I'll get to it some more, and it should be looking pretty decent then.

If the "grease" is really cosmoline, which guns used to be commonly stored in, then the easiest way to clean it is with a large dose of boiling water.  Use a large teapot or something bigger, an pour lots of boiling water over the metal items that need to be cleaned. Cosmoline comes right off with boiling water, and the heat of a large dose of boiling water will actually dry the metal. A little bit of water might need to be wiped off, and you should run a patch through the bore, but it is rather amazing how thoroughly hot metal will dry itself.