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Removing dial bezel on silver Trav A Dial?

After some 30+ years of service, a chip finally found it's way inside the old silver body Trav a Dial on my lathe. Luckily I have a spare and can keep going. But I'd like to take this apart to clean it. Unlike the modern units where the screw heads are epoxied over, this has 4 of the 6 screws exposed. The remaining two are under the dial, and I cannot get the dial off. I've pried with more force than I really thought wise with no success. I can see a wave spring of some sort which obviously provides friction for the bezel. I think it has something to do with retaining it too, but can't figure out what to do about it.

Anyone know how to get the bezel off without breaking something?

Thanks,

Jon Anderson

Reply to
Jon Anderson
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Is there a small hole in the side of the bezel? I've taken apart dial indicators which used such a spring. You have to rotate the hole until you see the spring closer to the hole, and press in with a small object (perhaps jeweler's screwdriver or short piece of wire in a pin vise), then pull the bezel forward a bit, and rotate to find the next place where the spring is bent outward, and repeat for that one, then find a third one, after which the bezel will lift forward. This assumes that the waves are wire bent towards smaller and larger diameters, instead of front and back flat spring.

I hope that this helps, DoN.

Reply to
DoN. Nichols

Thanks Don,

Looks like a flat spring wound front and back. I took a black one apart after picking the epoxy out of the screw heads. On those, the screws are all on the back, so didn't have to remove the bezel. It was a simple chip that got past the foam gasket, so easy to fix. I wrote SWI about repair, no answer yet. But I seem to recall reading on their site once they don't repair them...

Jon

Reply to
Jon Anderson

After asking for instructions on how to get my older Trav A Dial apart for cleaning, Cliff at SWI was kind enough to pass along the trick:

  1. Remove the plastic face, hands and dial face. The plastic face is pressed on and the dial face has a small amount of glue holding it down around the edges. ( If you are careful, these parts can be reused.)
  2. The head of two screws will now be visible. Remove these two screws along with four others visible from the top of the unit.
  3. The unit can now be pried apart to get to the gears.
  4. Use a small tooth brush and some alcohol to clean the gears, then lightly re-grease them.
  5. Lightly grease the bearings.
  6. Re-assemble.

I was sure the wave spring retained the bezel and had to be removed to get to the screws. Now all I have to do is figure out how to 'unglue' the dial face without destroying it....

I didn't mention I had two spare units and so fixing this one wasn't going to cost them a sale. Did mention it looked 'period' on my older Clausing Colchester and I wanted to keep it, and since it was 'scrap' as is, I had nothing to lose.

With so many companies today looking only to sell sell sell, I appreciated someone offering a bit of advice to help me fix it myself.

Jon

Reply to
Jon Anderson

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