Other than some really weak soap and water everything else I used for cleaning was pretty much decal-avorish so the bed just received some rubbing compound in the blank areas.
Cleaning supplies were:
- Trader Joe's Next to Godliness Dish Soap - Results were "meh". Of course if you look at the before pictures it's pretty obvious this was well beyond a 'gentle cleaning' project.
- Turtle Wax Bug and Tar Remover - Good results. Keep away from nice decals though. It will silver them. Mine were already on icky side so a bit more damage wasn't a heartache to me.
- Turtle Wax Renew Rx Rubbing Compound - Excellent results. Don't even think about going over a decal with this stuff, it will eat them away with a single stroke (as you can see below). Other than removing part of the rear decal the the paint looks awesome. You have to work on a tiny scale though. At times I was just going back and forth on areas around twice the width of my finger. But it ate though the eighty year old cigarette tar (that stuff that turns brownish-green when you clean an old machine) better than anything else I've used.
- Turtle Wax Color Magic Wax with 'Chipstick' - Waste of money. I got it because of the chip stick thing. It was useless. The stick is like a lipstick tube, but the stuff doesn't want to stick to the metal where I have nicks in the paint. It sticks great to the paint around the nicks, but not on the bare metal. I used a bit of the wax as well. After rubbing it in and wiping it off I couldn't tell any difference between a waxed area and an un-waxed area.
- Evaporust - Again, underwhelming. I have it so I used it, it does okay but not worth what they charge for it.
- Dremel with wire brush - Always good. For cleaning metal, including the rust Evaporust misses it's quick and thorough. None of the chrome was damaged on faceplate and oil cover so there was no issues giving them and the thumb screws a good solid pass with the Dremel.
- Mother's polish - There's no shine like Mother's.
I also have some plain old Turtle Wax carnauba wax that I haven't used yet but will sometime.
I didn't do anything drastic to the bottom of the machine. Just wiped away the cobwebs and refreshed the grease and oil so no photo if it. Likewise the motor assembly is temporary until I get the parts for the treadle conversion so I didn't go crazy on cleaning the bobbin winder. It's gnawing at me a bit, so I'm sure I'll do some re-chroming at some point to clean up the chewed up finish. I tried repainting the numbers for the stitch regulator but the only gold paint we had was fifteen years old and the tube exploded when I tried to squeeze some out. So instead of working on painting I spent a few hours cleaning metallic gold paint from every surface in our kitchen.
I didn't want to wrestle with the needle bar or start in with the Blaster PB yet so it stayed in the machine while I cleaned everything else.
So it's all back together. Did the first test run. It's lugging rather badly right now. I've given it about 30 years worth of oil on the moving parts and replaced the grease for the motor/handwheel. The problem appears not to be with the motor/handwheel though; when disengaged they fly. I'm dreading that it's an issue with the gear spacing. The top gears looks to be meshing pretty tight. Going to do some more research and see what else it could be. Once I get it sorted I think I'll post a video.
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