A Little Cleaning on the 15-30

I've been using the treadle pretty constantly.  It gave me a chance to really get annoyed with how dirty I'm leaving it.  Yesterday I decided that as a test of how I'm going to do the cleaning for the 66 I should do a pre-run with the 15-30.  Made sense at the time.

I didn't do a complete breakdown on it.  Just the bobbin area, the face plate, oil cover and bobbin winder were what I started with.  Here's the before picture of the parts I expected to see the biggest change in.

At first I didn't want to break out the Evaporust yet, so I went with a vinegar bath for a while.  I really didn't see any results after a few hours so I relented and poured a couple of small dishes for Evaporust.

I let it work overnight.  I can't say I was amazed at the results.  It got a lot of rust off.  But for the price I paid for it I was expecting a lot more impressive results.  Here's to bobbin cover before and after Evaporust.

To get all the rust I still had to go at it with a wire brush.  I quickly broke out the Dremel and here's a comparison on the bobbin winder cam with what I ended up with after Evaporust and after Dremeling it as well.

Since I have a couple of gallons of the Evaporust I'll still use it for the 66 rebuild.  But I wouldn't recommend it as a single step solution.  After I use up what I have I'll just go to using the Dremel by itself.

This was my first time taking apart and rebuilding the older 15 bobbin winder.  And I didn't take pictures as I took it apart.  So I ended up with a spare piece.  Just remember, the washer goes behind the cog.  Here's a comparison of the winder before and after.  I included the 66 winder as well since I didn't have a really good before picture of the whole 15-30 winder together.

Here are some more comparisons.  I was really happy with how the oil cover came out.  The faceplate was a little disappointing.  I didn't realize it was chromed and it's starting to flake now.  I wanted to use machine so I didn't take time to polish everything, just burnished it all with the wire brush.  The face plate could have really used a few coats of Mother's.  Maybe after the 66 is done I'll put it in the treadle and give the 15-30 a good rebuild as well.

I washed the head itself a bit and took the Dremel's nylon brush to some of the nastiest areas.  Also buffed the hand wheel to get it shiney as well.  It was a fun all day project and it feels much smoother when I'm treadling.  I know it's my imagination since I didn't really touch move of the drive side, but maybe it's happy being clean and is rewarding me with smooth operation now.  Here's a comparison of it all together as well as the before shot.