[R-390] Chassis cleaning and polishing

[Tisha Hayes]

I was reading of Perry's wrist saga (heal up my friend!) and his
experiences in cleaning up a chassis. I now shy away from abrasive cleaners
like bon-ami as it can be overdone and eat through cadmium plating or
copper plating that was used on the chassis of Drake radios.

One thing that I have found that works with just about every metal out
there, "Simichrome". It does miracles with brass and aluminum and you can
bring metals to an enduring shine that does not tarnish away very quickly.

It does have a slight ammonia smell but it is relatively skin safe. The one
thing that is a bit annoying when using it to bring a metal up to a high
polish is that you constantly get black stains on the polishing cloth and
it seems that it will never end. Oddly, if you wash the chassis with soap
and water once you have reached the brilliance level that you want it
somehow stops the oxide removal and your polishing cloth will come up clean.

The only time I regretted using it was on a single area of an SP-600. I had
completely disassembled the front panel, all the gears, little friction
wheels and clips. Cleaned and polished them all and put it back together.
It was so shiny looking... but.. I could not tune the radio any more. It
cleaned up the little friction wheel that contacts the edge of the tuning
dial so well that there was no "stickshun" for the dial to grab on to. I
had to go back in and apply rosin powder to the contact surface of the
wheel and the edge of the dial so I could tune the radio again.

(on a personal note, I escaped from consulting and went back in to
engineering for a radio company out of New Zealand. Now I can solve
problems instead of just talking about solving them. I still work from home
but most of my fun time is spent on physics stuff)

*Ms. Tisha Hayes, AA4HA*