Oil Tempered Springs - cosmetically restore matte appearance

[Alex K]

Hello guys! Recently I got extremely lucky and finally found myself a Tetting World Class gripper in really good (basically new) condition.

However, I was thinking of enhancing the appearance of the oil tempered spring, since as most of you know the coating does get a bit scratched over time. Has anyone ever experimented with this before? I would love to hear your opinions on this topic. Thanks! 

[Cannon]

They have a “coating” that is incidental from the manufacturing process. The raw wire has a mineral/paraffin coating which prohibits rust during storage and aids the wire to feed smoothly in production. 

Then the turned springs are baked for about 15 minutes at high temps. This vaporizes much of the coating and the springs come out of the oven very dirty. They are covered in extremely fine dust/ash that resembles graphite or toner ink. 

I don’t know of any maintenance or restoration that can be performed besides keeping the spring oiled and clean. If it has scratches… it has scratches. 

Old Tettings that have been oiled and cleaned A LOT seem to take on a “polished” appearance. This would be an option if you had a way to accelerate the process, maybe with buffing wheels, etc. I have never experimented with this. I just try and keep Tettings oiled and clean. Many of them were scratched already when new out of his shop. He kept them loose in boxes and had to handle them  a ton for drilling and pinning. They inevitably had scratches and that was part of the charm. 

[Alex K]

5 hours ago, Cannon said:

They have a “coating” that is incidental from the manufacturing process. The raw wire has a mineral/paraffin coating which prohibits rust during storage and aids the wire to feed smoothly in production. 

Then the turned springs are baked for about 15 minutes at high temps. This vaporizes much of the coating and the springs come out of the oven very dirty. They are covered in extremely fine dust/ash that resembles graphite or toner ink. 

I don’t know of any maintenance or restoration that can be performed besides keeping the spring oiled and clean. If it has scratches… it has scratches. 

Old Tettings that have been oiled and cleaned A LOT seem to take on a “polished” appearance. This would be an option if you had a way to accelerate the process, maybe with buffing wheels, etc. I have never experimented with this. I just try and keep Tettings oiled and clean. Many of them were scratched already when new out of his shop. He kept them loose in boxes and had to handle them  a ton for drilling and pinning. They inevitably had scratches and that was part of the charm. 

Thank you very much for the information! It turned out to be pretty hard to find... I will probably post about the restoration process when the gripper arrives, it sounds line an interesting challenge