Office of Steam Forum for Model & Toy Steam Gas & Hot Air Engines

Hi Danny I need some advice on my Doll 339 engine.
I have started to clean my engine with ballistol very carefully and all looks well. There are some soot marks on the side of the boiler. Will ballistol be ok at removing this as I don’t want to disassemble engine as it’s in nice condition.
Any help will be appreciated Danny.

Regards
Kevin

Yesterday I received above question from Kevin in a PM.
Now I normally keep PM's to myself, but I thought the question was too good for not answering it in public.

Ballistol will not remove soot. at least not in this case.
Maybe some dust on the surface, but no more.
For this you need to know what happend to your engine, or the boiler to be specific.

When the boiler was factory blued they where dipped into sort of varnish bath.
Problem is although such a varnish is touch dry when it was bought by the customer, when heated, fresh varnish goes bit sticky soft again.
This will disappear over long time, but at the time it was new, and when a bad fuel or wick started to give off soot, this would merge into the varnish.
So the problem is, that now the varnish is harden out on these 100 years old engines, the soot marks are baked into them.
This means when you try to remove those marks you also remove the varnish.

You got two options.
Leave it as it is, it is after all a 100 year old patina.
And If you don't  need to repair the boiler, or what ever major works need to be done on it, I would say leave it, as most purist would say too.

But if you still decide to remove the soot, then I strongly advice to varnish it back again, but then you are with the beginning of the problem again.
Are you going to wait maybe 10 years for full dried out varnish?

Spraying your engine in with Ballistol serves an other goal, It feed the paint work, preventing it of going  brittle.
Like shoe polish does for leather, it feeds it thereby give it's elasticity and prevents cracking.
Even it the paint already cracked, it will partly restore it again if you leave it to soak for a few hours.
It also protects Iron from rust, and give a nice shine to the engine back again.

That's why I always say, after use and the engine is cold, give it a spray with Ballistol, and wipe it nice in with a soft cloth.
You lay this way an air and moisture protective layer over the engine.

So I only can say Kevin, that was a very good question, good luck with your engine…

Cheers,
Danny

Very interesting and informative post, thanks Danny.