Adana Eight Five Cleanup

Monday, April 19, 2010 at 5:05 pm

Peter Rukavina

I went up to Canadian Tire this morning and used a backlog of Canadian Tire money to assemble a set of tools along with things like rags and penetrating oil, to help me nurse the Adana Eight Five back to life. I got things unstuck enough to actually move the works:

I’d appreciate any advice anyone has to offer on the best way to degunkify the parts of the press that are caked with a combination of dried ink, grease and dirt. The ink disc is particularly covered in crud and I don’t want to ruin it by going at it with someone too abrasive.

Adana

Letterpress

Comments

I would think that lots of WD

I would think that lots of WD-40 and blue shop towels, the main vendor of each being Canadian Tire, would be the best way of accomplishing this without abrasives (I imagine this is what you are already using). Just checked, and printing press cleaning is indeed one of the listed 2000 for WD 40:

Cleans and protects moving parts of old printing presses

The other products that come to mind are the common solvent Varsol, and Gunk Engine Cleaner, also available at you-know-where. The Gunk people have a whole gamut of degreasers and parts cleaners.

For smaller parts, some solvent in an ultrasonic cleaner (I seem to remember that Dave Cairns at UPEI, son of a jeweller, may have one) is the best bet.

You might also give David Heckbert, of the former Williams and Crue in Summerside (now absorbed into Transcontinental), or some of the old Linotype operators from The Guardian a call for professional advice.

Google tells me that the pros use a dry ice blasting process (see http://www.wickensdryiceblasti…, but that may be overdoing it.)