Restore Along Part 14 Handle With Care
Welcome back to Part 14 of our Restore Along with Julia, detailing her ongoing process of reconstructing Tulip the Featherweight! Today, Julia tackles some delicate challenges and finds a missing part of Tulip a home.
In case you missed it, you can read the previous installment here:
Previous Post: Restore Along Part 13: A Mystery or Two
Julia begins today's work with a couple of baggies worth of parts - her granddaughters will be visiting later in the day, but she has time to get a few parts clean before they arrive!
Starting with Tulip's stitch indicator plate, Julia gently rubs it clean of the old, dried up oil covering the plate. She forgoes her usual baking soda solution for a mild solution of dish soap to avoid scratching the paint.
Once clean, Julia wraps the indicator plate for further scratch prevention. She moves on to quickly clean the other parts from this batch without much fuss, cleaning the light switch thumb nut and screw with dish soap, and the others with baking soda.
And, of course, she oils all the parts before bagging them up for the clean drawer!
Julia runs into trouble with the tension bracket screw and nut, which are stuck. Her pocket screwdriver fits the screw head perfectly but doesn't offer enough leverage to free the nut through sheer force.
After trying another of her screwdrivers, it does not fit into the screw head as well, so these parts will remain stuck for the time being. Julia oils them again and leaves them to sit overnight.
Later in the day, after her visit with her granddaughters, Julia turns to Tulip's light switch unit, which gets the soap treatment as well.
(Note: the formerly homeless little silver screw is back where it belongs - Julia's thanks go to Jill for showing her where.)
Julia will need to replace the wire - but that soldering work will have to wait for another day. Now it's on to the lamp socket.
The lamp socket wires have lead tubing on them, so Julia puts down clean shop towels. She only keeps the socket out of its plastic bag long enough to disconnect the cap, wearing heavy-duty kitchen gloves to minimize any lead exposure. These wires will also need to be unsoldered and replaced.
Once the cap and screws are off and clean, Julia double bags the tubing and cleans up her shop towels, tools, and the whole area. Safety first!
Another day of cleaning done, and some of the more delicate work is out of the way. See you again next week!
