# Cleaning Dials



## RuskyWatchLover (Nov 12, 2006)

I was looking at my Vostok "Paratrooper" (or "Parachute" depending on where you bought it!) Komanderski today and, because I was bored, I decided to take it apart again and clean the dial. It's an old green "Made in CCCP" one, the lume has long since stopped working, and the dial has started to fade. What was once all green is now more of a green-gold colour, getting more gold towards the bottom. I really like the effect though.

Anyway, there was one mark near the 4 where either the lume or the paint had gone bad which has been bugging me for ages. Previously I'd tried a cotton bud and washing up liquid, lighter fluid and even the little bottle of stuff meant to flush out the syringe that came with an ink refill kit for my printer. None of them worked. They didn't make any difference whatsoever. Nothing loosened, no paint ran, and the mark still sat there smugly looking back at me.

So today I thought to myself, "I'm determined to get that mark off!". I was going to gently rub it with the end of a cocktail stick to begin with and, if the worst happened, then I'd just have to replace the dial. But then I thought I'd better try something softer first just in case it worked. I didn't want to spend more time on this than I had to.

I found an old pencil rubber (eraser) and rubbed the mark gently. Guess what? It came straight off! I then did the rest of the dial with it and it has all come up a treat. It's like some kind of miracle! It all looks like new!

This was just an ordinary pencil rubber, a little white one, which I bought for 10p years and years ago. It wasn't one of those fancy ones with a rough ink rubber end. It didn't break up all over the dial with lots of little bits either. I think the key here was gentleness.

I bet you've all known about things like this for ages but I thought I'd share my tip just in case anyone else has a similar problem that they've been trying to solve.


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## ernestrome (Dec 27, 2006)

RuskyWatchLover said:


> I was looking at my Vostok "Paratrooper" (or "Parachute" depending on where you bought it!) Komanderski today and, because I was bored, I decided to take it apart again and clean the dial. It's an old green "Made in CCCP" one, the lume has long since stopped working, and the dial has started to fade. What was once all green is now more of a green-gold colour, getting more gold towards the bottom. I really like the effect though.
> 
> Anyway, there was one mark near the 4 where either the lume or the paint had gone bad which has been bugging me for ages. Previously I'd tried a cotton bud and washing up liquid, lighter fluid and even the little bottle of stuff meant to flush out the syringe that came with an ink refill kit for my printer. None of them worked. They didn't make any difference whatsoever. Nothing loosened, no paint ran, and the mark still sat there smugly looking back at me.
> 
> ...


And those rough erasers can be used for taking out scratches on brushed cases. The humble eraser is a great tool


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