I am restoring an older , but good piece of machinery. It sat for many years, so it's really really dirty and showing some rust and paint wear. I do not want to wash it and get water all over it so it starts rusting the gearing, and tooling surfaces. What do you recommend to start getting this beast clean, so I can work on it without getting really, really dirty? Is there a spray or should I use something like ...WD-40? How about the chemical RESTORE they show on the $19.95 TV Ads??? Used to restore the faded paint on a car or clean the headlight lens from oxidation??
What I like to use to restore products is polish - it makes it look as good as new. Car polish - is really good to make that metal shine. I had an antique straightening Iron and car polish it really brought the color out seems to do the best job. I think that can help you the best.
I'm no longer in the dry-cleaning trade, however as a chemist, here's what I believe would be important. The solvent for dry cleaning would must be 1. Non-polar, so it may well dissolve greases, oils and other non-polar healthy compounds 2. Be ready to swiftly transport the dissolved substances away from the material fibers three. Be unstable under the temperatures used for the dry-cleaning procedure (evaporates speedily and entirely), no residue on the apparel *four* environmentally pleasant (this is an difficulty of ongoing interest in the chemistry community at gift)
There are degreaser products, but those are fairly aggressive and intended for really gummy congealed lubricant removal. WD-40, while less aggressive, is still a pretty good solvent as well as a light lubricant. If you need a lot of it, they sell it in 1 gallon cans (and probably larger sizes for industrial use), and they have pump sprayers to use with that size. I think a product for use on headlights or faded paint would be more of a polish than a degreaser, so that would not be appropriate unless you're trying to clean up a plastic viewing window or some such plastic guard, shield, etc.
