Easy peasy lemon sqeezy dial restoration.

michael e

Most of the forum members might have tried this but for those who haven't this is the easiest way to restore a dial.
The dial which I have on a old cal 231 has turned very dark due to the organic lacquer aging, The dial was unreadable really, I know the purist might be against this but the dial was really too dark. Now it is very crisp and clear.
All I did is> Put lemon juice in a small container of water, 4 parts water to one part lemon juice and leave the dial for ten minutes keeping a eye on it and swishing the mixture round while you wait. Be careful not to leave it to long. I then removed the dial from the mixture and then with a very soft artists paint brush with plenty of water on it I ran it over the dial very gently removing the remainder of the old lacquer. This technique doesn't work on modern dials though. After the lacquer has been removed I rinsed the dial under a slow running tap. Distilled water is probably best used in all of this process but I didn't have any.
If you are not confident I would practice on a few old dials you might have that are of no use.
Cheers Mick

U ulackfocus

So you strip the bad lacquer off it - great. Now what happens in a year or two when there's no protective coating? Well, I'll tell you (because I tried this on a Benrus Dial-O-Rama): it tarnished all over again in that short period of time. But now there's no coating to tarnish, it's the paint. Unless you can recoat it, this is a VERY temporary job.

cicindela

Not necessarily. Remember pure H2O (distilled in common usage) is a strong solvent and can have deleterious affects depending on what you are using it with/on. Sometimes plain tap can have a better affects, depending on what impurities it contains.

michael e

I will now send the dial to David Bill and sons for new lacquer to be applied, the last time I did this it was around £30 so not too expensive.