I suggest soaking in alcohol or acetone or vinegar. Start with the vinegar and leave it overnight.
WD40- that’s my new answer for everything. The duct tape of solvents 🙄
A spring bar is supposed to, well, spring. If it doesn’t, your watch falls to the sidewalk. Hopefully you catch it.
I now change out the springbars on EVERY vintage that I buy. I recommend the same to everybody. If the original spring bars matter to you, I would keep them somewhere in a box. I personally throw them out rather than risk them being reused. The only springbars that I think would matter keeping are rare original gold spring-bars. But again, this is just my two cents.
I suggest soaking in alcohol or acetone or vinegar. Start with the vinegar and leave it overnight.
Vinegar is an acid...IMO not a good idea if the intent is to use the bar...
If dirt and debris is inside the cylinder, it is not always going to be possible to remove it. But more importantly, it's not necessarily simply a matter of cleaning out dirt and debris. Spring-bars are made of relatively cheap disposable materials, and the springs themselves can become fatigued, corroded and weak, and ultimately they can fail. If the spring is not strong and resilient (and this inevitably occurs with time and exposure to ambient conditions), no amount of cleaning will repair the part.
I don’t really understand what you’re saying here.
If one doesn’t attemp to remove the debris, using a variety of materials or methods, how would one know if the debris can be removed?
Are you implying that, if an end of a spring bar is stuck, it’s a reliable indicator that the spring’s useful life has expired? How does one know, or test, that a spring is still, “strong and resilient”? Is there a generally accepted expiration date?
You would want to neutralize it, certainly. One would hope stainless steel would stand up to vinegar.
