Just my 2 cents, Soaking with the dial "Up" I would think works better... Cleaner is drawen into the "cracks" by gravity... Should take less time soaking..hence less chance of any unknown side effects.. and yes I have used this before..with great success....

I have done dials both facing up and down. I notice that when the dial is face down I find more sediment in the bottom of the bowl I use. I have a small plastic bottle cap that I have modified to place under the dial to support it.

It would seem to me that face down is the better position. I say that because the dial is much heavier and displacing or pushing down on the cleaner it sank in, which is pushing upward into the cracks in a futile attempt to float the dial. In the face up position, cleaner would not be forced into the cracks quite as much.

Making a small, flat disc with a tapered post at the center like this: [---^---] for the dial's center hole to rest (balance) on would give 100% exposure to the underneath side of dial that is then held slightly above the bottom of bowl in the cleaner, rather than with some areas touching a grid or surface while soaking. Whattayathink?

Thanks for the friendly welcome and answers to my question.

In re-reading this thread, it looks like most are using the dial-down method, however a few have tried it in other positions and it still seems to work OK. Although I have never tried it, my guess is that it probably doesn't matter that much, especially if you are going to use a toothbrush. Anyone else tried it face up?

I am constantly amazed at what I can learn from my 185 fellows (and gals).

Ron

WOULDN'T IT WORK GREAT IF THE DIAL PUT IN A JAR OF THE COMET AND PUT THE JAR IN YOUR ULTRASONIC CLEANER AND LET THE ULTRASONIC ACTION DO THE WORK?

To keep this going I use the Comet Bathroom Cleaner face down and use a old plastic quartz movement holder to keep it up & off the bottom of my container. I just put it in the solution before I go home at night and check it out in the morning. I found out the hard way on the ultrasonic cleaners, dont try them on a dial you want to keep.

Have you guys tried this trick on metal dials?

This one tip already paid for my subscription!!!

Can anyone give me the English equivalents, if any, of some of the successful US cleaners mentioned in the above thread.

I'm trying "Steradent" tablets --

Dan.

Just to add a little caution to this method. I have cleaned about 50 dial using Comet Bathroom Cleaner, it wrks great but have noticed a trend that the solder used to join the sunken sections is attacked by the chemicals in the cleaner. Discoloring on some occurs in 30+ minutes. The last dial I did, I soaked overnight, had a disruprion and got back to it about 50 hours after. The solder became brittle and with a screw driver flaked off.

A shorter duration works wonders, but leaving it too long could possibly begin eating at the solder joint.

Best,

Jeff

I have soaked dials in Comet Bathroom Cleaner and the result was great. I also just sprayed the dial with the comet and let it sit and resprayed a few hours later. I got the same result. then I had a watch with several cracks and I was too lazy to take the dial off the watch. I used a cotton swab and lightly placed the cleaner on the cracks and let it stand. I retreated it twice and the results were also great. However, you need to be careful you don't over do it so you get liquid into the watch. Just use small amounts and dab it.

When I first heard about Comet cleanser I was pretty excited about cleaning one of my Illinois Stewart dials. Because the dial was pretty rare, I decided to do a test run on a junk dial to see how the Comet worked. It worked great! Just to be safe, I did 3 more test dials over a period of 3 days to confirm the results on the first dial. Same results -- excellent. Each test was done overnight. After all of my testing, I finally had the confidence to clean my precious Illinois 18s Stewart dial. I put it in the cleaner, went to bed, and got up in the morning all excited and anxious to see my newly cleaned dial. To my horror, everything had faded on the main part of the dial. The only thing that had remained black were the graphics in the small subdial. I was depressed for several days. Now when I use Comet, I check the dial every hour, and try not to leave it in the solution for more than 5 or 6 hours max. Just thought I would share my hard learned lesson with fellow club members -- anybody got any Stewart dials they want to sell :-)

Wow! Was the dial an original or a reproduction? I did South-Bend dial on my SB 223 and let it soak for at a day. The dial cleaned really nice. I then lightly sprayed it with a clear coat to seal the cracks and the dial now shines like new.

However I did a rare dial with a fraternal emblem on it. When I took the dial out of the cleaner the emblem was gone but the rest of the dial was great. I came to the conclusion that the emblem had been painted on after the dial was made. The cleaner disolved the paint.

After cleaning several hundred dials with and without "Comet" (after learning the hard way to find other methods) I follow a couple basic rules;

A. WHEN NOT TO USE COMET;
1. If the seconds chapter is held in by ANYTHING other than lead-solder, clean the dial face only and very carefully without any pressure on the seconds chapter.

2. If the dial is already fairly "pristine", wash and brush only, no "Comet" needed.

3. If the dial is very early (from Key-Wind Mvt's, pinned foot types etc.), it is 90% likely to be hand-marked and inscribed. Use mild (ivory) soap, warm water, and gently clean it with your fingers.

4. Metal Dials;
a. Silver or Silver-Plated, use "Elenar" Silver cleaner dip(rinse and check dial every 30 sec or so), it brightens the silver without taking off the enamel.
b. Other metals, I hand clean with soap and water and hope for the best.

WHEN USING COMET CLEANER;

1. Using Comet, Max immersion time; 3 hours.

2. After 1 hour, rinse, inspect and (if needed) re-spray "hairlines" and let soak.

3. When finished, always use a well worn toothbrush and detergent to brush/rinse both sides of the dial face.

Also I use Green Concrete Driveway cleaner (from Home Depot, Paint dept.) to "de-rust" watch hands. It cleans good hands completely so they can be polished and re-blued, and the overly rusted hande disappear. (soak no longer than 20 minutes).

I normally never soak more than a half hour after first rinsing under the tap and scrubbing with a soft bristle toothbrush to remove most of the loose dirt. After a half hour I clean again with the toothbrush and rinse and drop in the cleaner for maybe another ten minutes and repeat the previous step. Then I dab it with a paper towel and hit it with a medium heat setting with the hair dryer to remove any residue moisture. This usually does it for me.

Steve

To answer Ernies question, yes the Stewart dial was an original. There would be no money to be made in reproducing the dial of a private label watch like this that doesn't have a very big following (I may be the only fool out there collecting these things, LOL). The one comment I forgot to make in my first posting is if this happened to my Illinois Stewart, it could be that all Illinois private label watch dials are just as fragile. I would imagine they were all made in the same manner from the same facility. I think what they must have done is fired part of the dial as enamel or porcelain, then silk-screen on the private label name, thus the differing reaction to the cleanser. The next time I do one of my Stewarts I will be applying the Comet only to the cracks to start. I plan to apply the solution with an artist brush (avoiding chapter markings, etc.), then set the dial face up in a jar on top of a wet sponge, then cap the jar. With the high humidity from the sponge, the Comet should stay wet for a long time, rather than drying out. Every hour or so I will get a visual through the glass to see if the cracks are disappearing. After the cracks are clean, I will probably give the whole dial a one hour soak directly in the Comet. After that it will just be a rinse and pat dry (I'm too paranoid to use a dryer, even on low setting). I haven't tried the above method yet, but will report back after my first attempt.

There was a product mentioned earlier in this thread, four years, about a product called "DIAL CLEANER THAT REALLY WORKS". It was sold on Ebay. I bought several bottles of it several years ago. I ran out a couple weeks ago and went back looking for it on Ebay. I couldn't find it. I did some research and think I discovered what the product was or its main ingredient. It's an industrial disinfectant/germicide/virucide product called SaniZide. It seems to have the same results from soaking a dial in it for 15 minutes and then rinsing off the dial. Here's a dial I grabbed randomly to test it out:

Before


After

Great thread!!! I can't find this type of liquid Comet up here in Toronto, so I'm trying Scrub Free liquid cleaner that has NO Bleach. I've got a Trenton dial from a model 3 18s convertible that I've had soaking for about an hour now and it's a slight bit cleaner, so will post results tomorrow on this brand of cleaner. Here's the dial before cleaning. Many, many hairlines. I chose this dial to clean as I have a mint 1891 Trenton dial on the way to replace this, so figured lets try and if it comes clean great, if not then oh well.

Thanks, Roland.

Roland, The only place I have found here that sells that kind of Comet is Walmart.

Hi Dave, forgot all about checking Wally's World. Well here's an update on this cleaning product after 4 1/2 of soaking. I can still see the larger hairlines, and if I had left it over night I'm sure it would have cleaned them all out, but at this time when I went to check I noticed the black numerals starting to fade so I pulled it out. So is this Scrub Free the stuff to use? Not sure and at this time don't have another donor dial to experiment with. Here's what the dial looks like after the short 4 1/2 hrs of soaking.

Thank you, Roland.

Roland, after 4-1/2 hours, the inks are being bleached out.

I think these darker hairlines are often a combo of saturated nicotine mixed with oil or coal smoke and therefore after the first hour "soak", I GENTLY scrub the dial hairlines with a dish detergent soaked soft toothbursh (the more "used" the better), and then soak it again for NO MORE than anther hour and call it "Done".

Has anyone used Polident? I hear it works well and does not fade the numbers after long soaks.

Thanks Dave, I'll give it one more shot with some dish soap. As for the Polident, I've used it with no positive effect on dials with only faint hairlines.

I have never tried this stuff but might give it a try.

Their web site states "The concentrated formula can be diluted with water to remove grease, soap scum, coffee and juice stains, ink, lipstick and more from any washable, indoor or outdoor surface."

Polident Whitening works. Check out the results near the bottom of this thread:

Canadian South Bend Dial

I put the fizzy Polident tablet right on top of the dial in an inch of warm water. Soaked it for about 30-60 minutes then "rubbed" the dial with my finger. I did this three times and the hairlines are invisible. My dial literally turned out "MINTY" since the polident was mint flavored.

John

Dial Cleaning 101A

After "much study" of the articles (so far) we have posted for this important subject, I decided to embark on my own little "experiment". First, I consulted my Dentist about the fast (5 minute?) cleanser and was told sharply Be Careful! As for the overnight stuff, he said that was very good for dentures and might work well for this if the stains are much the same organic stuff. So I got some to "experiment" with . . .

First, I tried a three hour "soak" of some "so-so" dials from the dial stash . . .

The results were much better for superficial cracking than for deep structural cracking. These are being re-soaked now for 36 hours after seeing what it did . . .

. . . on a very fine Restoration Project Bunn dial that looked like it was "pole-axed" near the center, a 36 Hour Polident (only) "soak" made it 98% GONE!. (Sorry I did not have a better "before" picture.) The extra good news is there seems to be no "bleaching" of the red dyes. More on this soon . . . .