Compass Cleaning

November 25, 2009

This evening, I took the compass out and brought it in the house to see if I can make the globe clear. You can see how "foggy" it is. You can see a very thin area at the top where its been behind the bezel and its still clear. I wish I knew someone with some stuff to make this clear again. A new compass is probably $200-$300.
I found a place that will rebuild the compass or I can buy a new globe and replace it myself. $44 from DiscountWeather.com

I expect that a GPS will be the primary mode of navigation but its good to have the compass as a back up.

November 27, 2009

Here's the compass gyro and card. You can see where I wiped my finger on the card cover and from that see how filthy this thing is. No wonder things were foggy.

I bought Headlight Lens Restorer from Turtle Waz and went to work on the compass globe. I could see that it was getting polished but it was still pretty foggy trying to see the compass card. So I decided to drain the oil and take it apart and see what it looked like inside.

Well, that was the trick. The inside had a liberal coating of some kind of green gook. Just look at the photo of the compass inards and where I wiped a clean spot.

So I washed everthing off with hot soapy water and rinsed well with hot water then dry.

I need to get some new oil and make sure everything's dried out good, then I can put all back together.

It had a pretty large air bubble in it. I'd like to have less, but I suspect that much is needed to handle expansion of the fluid. I'll have to search on the Net and see if I can find any info on how much of a bubble to leave.

Below is a shot of everything all cleaned up and just drying off.

I've ordered compass oil from West Marine. The next thing to chase down is a red LED bulb to replace the white one in the compass now. The red plastic filter is shot and there is no replacement for it, so it seems a red LED light would be a great solution.

Here it is with everything cleaned up and ready to go back together. I just need to get some oil.

December 24th, 2009

I finished the compass. All I had left to do was put the oil in. I had gotten the oil more than a week ago, but I didn't have a bottle or funnel that would get the oil through the small fill hole. I bought a little plastic bottle that had a needle nose on it and it did the trick. So here are the before and after pics:

It looks better, huh? I just hope I didn't screw up the mechanism while having it apart.