Cleaning metal case parts

[willofiam]

I am so excited, ever try to clean a metal part off a case that has 50 years of gunk on it, clean and scrub=still gunk on it, clean and scrub again = still gunk on it on and on and on… I have tried all kinds of things until now. I recently had a small desk clock in, metal case (see picture), full of gunk in all the cracks and crevices. read somewhere, if I can remember where I would tell the guy how wonderful he is, to use Tide straight out of the bottle. Useing a soft toothbrush (my teeth are nice and clean now too) in about 3 minutes this case has become like new with very little effort. I am going to try this on black mantle case parts or whatever. Hope your having some fun, William

[david pierce]

William,
Would a pressure washer work? I wonder if you could take the clock to a do-it-yourself car wash and use their pressure washer. Just a thought.
david

[willofiam]

Hey David, in some cases you might be right as dirty as some are 😯 , but I would use caution if you try it, for me the whole idea is to preserve the patina yet remove the dirt quickly and cautiously, yes some would say the dirt should stay but I think it is unsightly. the pressure washer may remove more than wanted. also alot of the parts are rather small and with my luck I would send em somewhere never to be found again. thanks David
P.S. do you have some of your lathes set up in shop? if you could would you be willing to post in the shop section I am sure it would inspire many. William

[david pierce]

William,
Yes, I do have some of them set up and I started cleaning up my shop. It looked like a scene from the TV show HORDERS. Bob keeps promising to step me through the process of posting pictures on the computer but has not gotten around to it yet. I spent a weekend picking lathes up off of my living room floor and filled up three shelves with these suckers. I have fixed a lot of them up and gotten them into good working order. I plan to sell most of them in the future but I want to make some oak cases and sell them in the case with a motor and accessories. My most current pressing problem is time as I have very little free time to get anything done along this line. I am working on it.
david

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