Ultrasonic bath with minerial spirits and wood handles?

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sth2006
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Joined: Sun Mar 09, 2014 12:02 am

Ultrasonic bath with minerial spirits and wood handles?

Post by sth2006 »

What's your experience with this combination? I purchased the ORCA cleaning, restoration notebook of articles - great references. And after cleaning a Langley Streamlite by hand, decided that I need to assist part of my cleaning process and purchased a small ultrasonic jewelry cleaner big enough for my smaller reels. I'm now working on a Rochester reel with a wooden handle and am reluctant to put the part attached to the handle in the ultrasonic cleaner. I've been experimenting with hot water, white vinegar and mineral spirits. So I took a small piece of untreated Ash left over from another project, which I could break off by hand and stuck it into the ultrasonic bath with mineral spirits for about an hour. To my surprise it turned the ash into, let's call it "iron wood" Color is the same, but it will never be broken by hand. So is it safe for me to put my wooden reel handle into the bath? Will it just remove the old black paint? Any advice or suggestions is greatly appreciated.

Steve
Teal
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Re: Ultrasonic bath with minerial spirits and wood handles?

Post by Teal »

Steve,

I have experimented with some cheap-o UNion Hardware reels with wooden handles, my experience has been that their handles have lost all their paint in the vibrosonic bath. Of course, these had no primer to begin with, so perhaps a better (primered) painted wood handle would have survived better, but I have not experimented with that.

-- Dr. Todd
big hoss
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Re: Ultrasonic bath with minerial spirits and wood handles?

Post by big hoss »

I gave a polished wooden knob a try in the bath - water and a small quantity of vinegar - watched carefully and got it out quickly - the surface polish was obviously being removed. I won't try that again but it was apart of the learning curve.
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