Clock Restoration of the Adamantine Finish. Restore clock case Finish basics.

First we'll need some generous amount of rags. Now in order to clean the finish, whether you're talking about a adamantine finish like this or painted finish or wooden finish, I use D&L Blue Label Hand Cleaner. You can buy this at automobile supply shops or hardware stores. Now there are other types out there. There's an orange type which has pumice. Do not use the type of pumice. It's too abrasive. It should not contain any pumice. This is a pretty widely found type of hand cleaner so it's the D&L Blue Label Hand Cleaner. Now if the clock was really really dirty, very grimy, I would initially use some Murphy Oil Soap. Pour some in a bucket with some hot water, dip your rag in there, wring it out real well, and just wipe off the finish of the clock, surface of the clock. But I would only use that unless your surface was really dirty. This surface is dirty but not that filthy that we need to first go over with the Murphy Oil Soap. After we're done with cleaning it with the D&L Hand Cleaner, then we will wax the finish. And again the wax I use will be the same as I use on any finish, adamantine, painted, or wooden surface that's shellac, is bry wax. This is imported from England and you'll find it at some of your specialty hardware stores. You can look up on the internet under bry wax and be able to order it off there. This container, which is 16 ounces, will last you a long time. And this is the clear. This is the excellent wax. It's a good hard wax that will stay on the finish and last a couple years. It won't be for at least a couple years before you'd have to put any more wax on it again. Some of the equipment that we'll use, along with the rags, is a paintbrush. Now this is a one-inch paintbrush and I cut the bristles down short because what we'll do is, in some cases, we'll apply some of the hand cleaner on here and brush it into the surface, getting some of that dirt and grime out. Also, for some of the smaller areas, we'll use our toothbrush. Into the corners and the little crevices, we'll use q-tips to clean that out. Now some of the clocks that you may be working on may have some type of ornamentation on it. This clock doesn't. We will be removing the bezel and the face. Now what's interesting, if you can see here, and I'll zoom up, here's the color of our finish. Right behind the bezel is the color of our finish, what it originally was back when this was made many, many, many decades ago. See if I can get a close-up of that color. There. You can see it's more of a reddish cast. Looks like maybe this clock case was in the sun and it's faded some. But we'll clean it and try to see if our surface dirt, once removed, may bring us back to the original reddish color. Okay, we're gonna take some of our hand cleaner, open it up, and you can see it's kind of a yellowish, whitish kind of. Dab some onto our cloth there and just start applying it. You can see already there's some of the dirt coming off right on with the cloth there. Wow, look how much dirt came off already. Probably have to turn that over, get a cleaner side here, put some more cleaner on, and wipe it down some more. Now I'm gonna use my q-tip, dip that in, roll along the edge here, scrub it in, and you see all the dirt that came up on that q-tip there. Now here's another fine example of before and after. I've cleaned this part of the top of the clock case, but I have not cleaned this part yet. Now this is just using the hand cleaner alone is giving me this kind of result with the rag. I haven't even gone over it with the wax yet, which will even further increase the beauty of the finish. So here's just using the hand cleaning alone and just cleaning it compared to what it looked like before. So those of you out there who are interested in doing resale clocks, you would definitely increase the value and the quality of your clock cases by having a case that's clean and in good condition versus one that's dirty and it looks poor. Some of these things are sometimes only just very cosmetic in terms of looks, just a matter of just using proper equipment and proper things that you can use to clean the case and add beauty and value to your your prized possessions. As you can see the cleaner has revealed a beautiful finish that lives underneath that dirt. And look at that finish. All we did was clean it. It wasn't refinished or anything like that. The beautiful color is right there all along. It just had to be revealed underneath all that dirt. I'm going to go ahead and apply the wax. Now this will help protect, shine. It does clean, but I don't use it for the purpose of cleaning. Primarily just to polish wax and preserve the finish that's on there. And as you can see it's just all this is really a wax. Kind of like a very much like the paste wax that you would use on a car. A similar type. I wouldn't use car paste wax. I would definitely use this product. So I'll take my rag, put my fingers through it and wad it up like so. Get some on the rag there. A generous amount. And just like you would wax a car, start applying it. And then once you've applied it on the entire case, let it dry like a wax. Which would normally dry like on a car for example. And then you'll buff it. Now I'll tell you one thing. This is going to require a lot of elbow grease because this wax is a tough wax. And a tough wax to buff. But I'll tell you the results are really outstanding. Alright I've buffed out most of the wax. And now I'm just using a q-tip to go through the edges. Clean out the edges because it's really difficult to get to those areas with the cloth. Take a look at this finish. Is that something else? All we did was clean it and put some good quality wax on it. And it's beautiful.