With Hurricane Eta on the way, I decided to get some more work done on the ink disk before the rain and wind started. This time I worked section by section instead of scattering my attention across the whole disk, and it worked beautifully. My first round of scrubbing took the top layer of bright orange rust off, but there was plenty left on the disk for round two. I scrubbed each section down with steel wool until the coating of WD-40 stopped turning new shades of rust-colored, then wiped the residue off with rags until they came away mostly clean. Not a lot of work done, just the back of the disk, but I feel it’s good work.
It might even be good enough my perfectionist self will be satisfied and I won’t have to do a third scrubbing on this small section of press. Yay for progress!
Once Eta is passed, I’ll scrub down the top of the disk to take the remaining rust off it as well. Then it’s off to the welder to hopefully get disk and shaft reunited!
ISABEL NEE 