At work about 10 years ago I found a 1938 crankshaft wrapped in cotton impregnated with cosmoline? When I unwrapped it (quite a task), the crank was in mint condition...

Octane,

I think "cosmolene" was the stuff our "Springfield" rifles were smothered with after WWI. When they were issued to us in '42 at Advanced Flying School in the US, it had dried-out over the years and was hellish to get off.

D.

Cosmoline - one of my extended family served in the USMC during WW2 and got into trouble when his drill sergeant caught him boiling the stuff off the working parts of his new rifle.

"Boiling it off" rings a distant bell :)