Hawthorne and Sheble Cabinet Cleaning

[rgordon939]

Starting to get ready to leave for the Union Show in a few days, so with nothing to do today I decided to clean up a H&S cylinder cabinet I picked up at an estate sale a while back. It was pretty dark and dirty as well as the finish being alligatored. I used something different on this rather than the normal cleaning products we normally use. I'll post two pictures, before and after, and would like to hear from you all what you think. No stripping or refinishing of any kind, just cleaning.

I will let you all know what I used on the cabinet and hardware after I've read some of your comments.

Rich Gordon

[alang]

The wood cleaned up nicely, but the hardware looks like new. What's the secret? Did you remove the hardware for cleaning?
Thanks
Andreas

[rgordon939]

...

[rgordon939]

I have been using a car polish Meguiars Scratch X 2.0 to polish the bed plates on my machines. Also works great on horns. It puts a nice luster on them without damaging the pin striping. What I recently discovered that it also does an amazing job on the wood cases. I use 0000 steel wool to apply the polish and keep rubbing till the finish is smoothed out and has a nice luster. Better than any other cleaner I've used. The brass drawer pulls were removed and placed in a container of water to which I added a denture cleaner tablet. I let this sit overnight and used a toothbrush to clean them off after I took them out.

Attached a few pictures of machines so you can see how Scratch X 2.0 works on the bed plates.

Rich Gordon

[oldphonographsteve]

Those bedplates look amazingly shiny... I need to get me some of that stuff!

-Steve