El Rusto probably deserves it's own thread. This is the 10 buck Goodwill special as arrived.

This evening I disassembled it and put it into a shotglass full of Evap-O-Rust. Just like the Santa Claus Wakman (which went into alum first.)


There are quite a few useful parts here. Best of all is the balance. That alone saves 12 to 24 hours attempting to untangle one of the other hairsprings.

Surprisingly the mainspring looks salvageable.

Bit tricky disassembling this. There was no way to remove the winding screw with all that rust on it. So I opted to remove the train bridge first. The rust had spread to the train wheel pivots. So I decided to remove the train wheel bridge. The seconds arbor had disintegrated.

Once the third wheel was released, the spring let go. I had already removed the the escape wheel so the hour wheel spun really fast. There was still wind on the spring!

Releasing the center wheel bridge and the barrel bridge the whole thing came apart as a group. Did not have a chance to photograph it as the rusted parts went straight into the Evap-O-Rust. I was able to remove the spring from the barrel before dunking the blob-O-parts. I could not get the barrel arbor to release.

The point of this experiment is to see if Evap-O-Rust will loosen the barrel screw. I have spares of these parts. Apart from one bridge screw with disappeared into iron oxide when I attempted to unscrew it.

The real surprise was the set works and motion works were untouched. These are all useful parts. If one was to purchase them individually, the watch would be worth 10 times what I paid. If I was to value my time at professional rates, the watch would be unaffordable.

The plan will be to use one of the random assemblies of watch parts as the donor. It would have been nice to salvage the wheel train -- but we can not have everything. This is a practice watch anyway.

 

Interesting experiment. Be interested to see how evaporust performs.
Are you going to use it to remove the rust stains from the case?

 

There was no need to use the rust remover on the case. I was able to scrape most of it off using some peg wood. To my disappointment I found one of the lugs is broken off at the spring bar hole.

It was notice on the "Things with springs" clubhouse chat that the case is marked Hong Kong. I have other cases and backs with this marking one even has the same casemaker name. That could be an interesting study in itself. The other case is smaller.

I did 'dip' the movement ring and the crown and stem. The crown is in poor shape. These also seem to clean easy with the pegwood.

This is arguably about the 5th watch I have used Evap-O-Rust on. The other 4 were mostly random or incomplet parts as noted in the other thread. Part of the experiment has been how long to let the parts soak. The can says 1 to 12 hours.

I was going to give this the full 12. I removed the 'blob' after three hours. I did some of the other parts for varying amounts of time. On these small parts one hour is probably enough.

The results are most encouraging. Here are some microscope shots of the parts after the 'blob' was broken apart.






The first photo (above) shows the barrel arbor screw. This is interesting as I was able to turn the screw atfter the three hour soak to separate the barrel from the 'blob.' I suspect there was probably grease on the screw that prevented the rust from penetrating the lower side. The threads do look rusty. The arbor can probably be saved.


Here is a microscope shot of the wheels. While they broke apart from the blob when the bridge was removed Chunks of rust remain, Not unlike the Antikethera device. It is hard for the microscope to capture this. One really has to zoom in and the depth of feild goes to hell


Another attempt to photograph the results after running the parts through the cleaner. While the click is rather corroded. The clickspring is salvageable and was not run through the Evap=O-Rust. A good thing as I am short on these clicksprings. The click screw was probably a source for much of the rust.


The balance bridge and winding wheel suffered the most damage. While the Bridge can be saved. It can be seen that the plating has come off. A lot of the dust removed by the pegwood is the chrome plating. The remains of the clickscrew are still in place and will need to be dissolved out. I have a spare bridge, which was part of the instigator of why I went ahead and bought this watch.


The plate cleaned up really well. The gold coloring is reflection as I was using a jewelry box lid to see If I could get better lighting for the microscope. Some of this could be microscopic scratches in the plating. There was loose rust on this before dipping.


Train side of the plate. This was really clean. The rust did not really penetrate into this side. Probably due to the three bridge design.


The Upper bridge really cleaned up. The cap jewel bridge screw was lost..

This is mostly an overview of the damaged parts that went through the rust remover. The other part have been simply placed through the cleaner as they are in pretty good shape.

Edit: do not press tab the post happens before it is ready.

 

Cleaned up really well.
Hard to believe it is the same watch!

Does not quite run. I slinkyed the hairspring coning it. Not quite feeling confident enough to remove it and attempt the deconing. Decided to re-case it as I want to work on other watches. The broken lug makes it not wearable as is. I did replace the crystal as decades ago I bought a crystal assortment when S. La Rose was still active.

The point of this experiment was to see How the Evap-O-Rust worked on a severely rusted watch. I did however replace parts. Basically the whole barrel bridge, click and winding wheel. It also has a different wheel train. So it is not quite the same watch.

 

I thought that I had the "Home For Wayward Watches" here, but you run the "Morgue For Wayward Watches!"

You post a fine series of threads on resurrecting watches. They are entertaining and enlightening to read.