Balance Wheel–All cleaned up

Woo-hoo!  I have something cleaned up and put back together again for Ms. Rusty! 

Here are the all the balance wheel parts after they have been cleaned and polished

The first step in reassembly (after putting the two “eccentric” pins back in) is putting the retaining spring back on the center pin.  It’s important to make sure the right hand side of the spring is attached to the center pin.

Then you put on the retaining washer, with the single hole going over the center pin.  Then set on the Textolite gear.  The key to this step is connecting the pin on the gear with the left-hand side of the spring. (Back view of gear with pin in spring).  Then you can slide on the gear collar.

(click here for a before picture)

Before tightening the set screws on the gear collar, you need to check the clearance between the gear and collar.  You don’t want too much wiggle room, but you also don’t want it so tight that the gear has trouble moving.  A good way to check for clearance is to see if you can slide the edge of a piece of note paper between the collar and the gear.  Once the clearance is set, you can tighten the set screws.

I also want to point out that with Turtle Wax Chrome Polish (and a lot of elbow grease) I was able to remove all the surface rust from the chrome area of the wheel.  Here is a before and some after pictures.  It’s not perfect, but pretty good if you ask me!

A little birdie told me Evapo-Rust works excellent on chrome parts, so I have a bottle of that on order from Amazon (thanks Alasdair).  I’m hoping it works better on small parts that are hard to polish by hand, like screws.