How do I remove blue Loctite from threads?

[cobra]

If you already have screw out.cleanup threads with a tap or die to remove residue.

heat will melt blue lock tite so fastener can be removed.
I have used a pencil point soldering iron on small fasteners to loosen those held with blue lock tite.

look at the lock tote web site. It tells you at what temp it becomes liquid for fastener removal Along with what product best for different applications.

may want to consider using purple lock tote for reassembly . I use it for scope mount rather then blue that is over kill in many applications.

 

[Squaregrouper]

I highly doubt dry blue Loctite is what is preventing you from putting the screws back in.

 

[aray]

Status so far:

Of the items I have on hand, alcohol didn't work, acetone didn't work, WD 40 didn't work, and my brass wire brush mostly didn't work. Well the brush did take off maybe about 10% of the loctite after 30 minutes of hand scrubbing, but by then I was starting to wear the blueing off and I had destroyed most of the bristles on the brush. I do have a Dremel, but that's in KY right now, as is my heat gun and my soldering iron. (We're in the process of moving to KY.)

I don't own any of the other items (e.g carb cleaner) though I guess I'm going to have to get something to get this off. The solvent pre64hunter referenced is $52 on Amazon, and MigraineMan pointed to methylene chloride at $40. Of course the rifle is worth far more than that so if needed, naturally I'll pop for a bottle/can and get it done.

As for the other questions & comments:

1) It is a Henry Long Ranger model H014S chambered in 223/556. I love the gun - but not in one particular aspect. Normally on a lever action gun you can take off one screw, pull out the lever, remove the bolt out the rear, and remove the ejector. Then you can clean the barrel with a rod vs. a snake. That's what I planned to do, this time. (Previously I had always cleaned it with an Otis bore snake.) Only once I removed that screw, the lever wouldn't come out. As it turns out, maybe all other Henrys and all other lever action rifles work that way, but not the 223/556 ... no doubt due to the locking bolt assembly patterned after the AR 15 platform. It was hard to find, but eventually I found the following video on Henry's website; as you can see it is a much greater/involved process it you want to break down this particular model. So when I saw that I decided I'd just go ahead and clean it as I always had, with a bore snake. Except I couldn't get the trigger guard screw to engage the threads on the other side.

H014 The Long Ranger | Henry Repeating Arms

www.henryusa.com

2) Many of you have expressed skepticism that blue loctite could be the cause of this screw not going back in. Me too! But I can't see any other reason this would fail. Nothing appears wrong with the screw. And once I discovered removing that one screw wasn't going to get the job done for me, I immediately tried to put it back in without doing anything else ... with no success. It doesn't appear damaged in any way whatsoever, other than the blue Loctite on the threads. I'm at a complete loss. How hard can getting one silly screw back in be after all? This isn't brain surgery! Yet here I am...

 

[Jim12]

Status so far:

Of the items I have on hand, alcohol didn't work, acetone didn't work, WD 40 didn't work, and my brass wire brush mostly didn't work. Well the brush did take off maybe about 10% of the loctite after 30 minutes of hand scrubbing, but by then I was starting to wear the blueing off and I had destroyed most of the bristles on the brush. I do have a Dremel, but that's in KY right now, as is my heat gun and my soldering iron. (We're in the process of moving to KY.)

I don't own any of the other items (e.g carb cleaner) though I guess I'm going to have to get something to get this off. The solvent pre64hunter referenced is $52 on Amazon, and MigraineMan pointed to methylene chloride at $40. Of course the rifle is worth far more than that so if needed, naturally I'll pop for a bottle/can and get it done.

As for the other questions & comments:

1) It is a Henry Long Ranger model H014S chambered in 223/556. I love the gun - but not in one particular aspect. Normally on a lever action gun you can take off one screw, pull out the lever, remove the bolt out the rear, and remove the ejector. Then you can clean the barrel with a rod vs. a snake. That's what I planned to do, this time. (Previously I had always cleaned it with an Otis bore snake.) Only once I removed that screw, the lever wouldn't come out. As it turns out, maybe all other Henrys and all other lever action rifles work that way, but not the 223/556 ... no doubt due to the locking bolt assembly patterned after the AR 15 platform. It was hard to find, but eventually I found the following video on Henry's website; as you can see it is a much greater/involved process it you want to break down this particular model. So when I saw that I decided I'd just go ahead and clean it as I always had, with a bore snake. Except I couldn't get the trigger guard screw to engage the threads on the other side.

H014 The Long Ranger | Henry Repeating Arms

www.henryusa.com

2) Many of you have expressed skepticism that blue loctite could be the cause of this screw not going back in. Me too! But I can't see any other reason this would fail. Nothing appears wrong with the screw. And once I discovered removing that one screw wasn't going to get the job done for me, I immediately tried to put it back in without doing anything else ... with no success. It doesn't appear damaged in any way whatsoever, other than the blue Loctite on the threads. I'm at a complete loss. How hard can getting one silly screw back in be after all? This isn't brain surgery! Yet here I am...

While no expert, I have removed and reinstalled blue locktite-treated screws and bolts ranging in size from a laptop computer case to the washing machine agitator. Never was the blue locktite an issue.

I suspect that things aren't lining up right, or the part that receives the screw threads has play and is below the threads when you're trying to screw it in from above. Have you tried inverting the assembly and turning the screw upwards, toward the ceiling? Just spitballing.

 

[JohnnyE]

There isn't just Loctite on the screw. It's also in the female threads. If you need to get it out of the screw, get it out of the female threads, too.

 

[AssMan]

Boils at 300*

 

[OrbitalEllipses]

Wife’s hairdryer too..

 

[Jim12]

There isn't just Loctite on the screw. It's also in the female threads. If you need to get it out of the screw, get it out of the female threads, too.

The operative word is, "If."

How, and why would Locktite be the problem? It (Locktite) was a fixed, solid material on the male and female threads when the screw was removed. Did it somehow expand to block the threads after the screw was removed???

 

[Rambler]

The correct answer is mechanical removal of the adhesive with a tap and die of the correct thread size. By the time you determing the size and order the tools (some threads are rather gun specific and only Brownells and similar vendors carry the tooling) you are probably better off going to a shop with a gunsmith to look at it. I suspect, as several others have postulated, that the male and or female threads are (and this is the correct highly technical way of describing this) buggered up.

 

[md77]

Henry Lever Quick Takedown Screws | Black Nitride

Henry Takedown Screw, Henry Quick Lever Screw, Henry Lever Takedown Screw

rangerpointstore.com

 

[aray]

Success! I got the the trigger guard screw back into the female side, after trying over the last few days for the umpteenth time. Once I got the threads to bite just a little bit, naturally at that point the outcome was certain.

The only thing I can think that was different was that I was able to remove at least a little bit of the blue Loctite on the male side using the wire brush & elbow grease for about 30 minutes. Was that the cause? I know many of you are skeptical, and with good reason. I may never know for certain. But what I do know for certain is this: that the trigger guard screw is never going to be removed by me again. It's the Otis bore snake forever more for me.

And in hindsight, I really should have left well enough alone anyway. On this Henry the locking bolt assembly mates with the barrel much like an AR 15. But unlike an AR and other semiautomatics, the action doesn't depend upon gas to cycle, so everything in the receiver stays much cleaner. I was going to give that a good scrub down and lubrication too, despite little evidence that it needed that. Lessons learned; if it ain't broke don't fix it. You'd think I would have learned that by now, but obviously I need an occasional reminder. Sigh.

But my sincere thanks to everyone who offered suggestions. I learned a lot from all of the postings, and will apply that generically in other scenarios. Just this particular one I won't be visiting again!

 

[JohnnyE]

The operative word is, "If."

How, and why would Locktite be the problem? It (Locktite) was a fixed, solid material on the male and female threads when the screw was removed. Did it somehow expand to block the threads after the screw was removed???

Years back I was instructed that many adhesives don't bond well to an earlier cured layer of themselves. For instance, to add a layer of epoxy, the existing layer of cured epoxy needs to be scuffed with 100 grit sandpaper in order to get a good bond. 3M 5200 needs to be removed entirely because while it bonds well to the appropriate substrate, it doesn't bond well to itself. IDK about superglues like Loctite, but it bears looking into.

 

[lazarus]

For something like that I would tin the threads but loc tite would do I suppose because it works. As a matter of fact I think the main screw on a 10-22 has or used to be equipped with red thread compound from the factory.
I never removed a screw that had loc tite on it that couldn’t be reseated unless the threads were screwed up somehow, worn or not formed properly.

Ditto.

I use the pink stuff on most gun related things unless I need real holding power (blue) or never want it to come back apart (red).

 

[Tracker12]

MEK and wire brush