Alternatives for Trichloroethylene (One Dip) and Perchloroethylene

[Indy]

I’m looking for a safer alternative to Trichloroethylene or Perchloroethylene* for cleaning the Balance Ruby.  I think everything else will be able to be cleaned in the Ultrasonic, but I’m hesitant to put the Balance Complete in the machine.  I know Actetone will ‘float off’ any old dried lubricant, but I’ve also heard it can damage rubies.  I don’t really want to use Naptha or Benzene, as they leave a film behind that will likely interfere with the synthetic lubricant.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance for any help.

*When I was on the Haz-Mat Team we referred to TCE, PCE, and other nasty chemicals as Ethyl-methyl-bad-$h!t.  It  kind of became the generic name for the chemicals.

[HectorLooi]

I've been using hexane. Not sure how safe that is but it's affordable. 

[Paul80]

I too have moved to Hexane, works well and nice a cheap to boot

 

[watchweasol]

I use brake and clutch cleaner. I think that contains a lot hexane. £20   5 las. Leaves no residue.

[Neverenoughwatches]

1 hour ago, watchweasol said:

I use brake and clutch cleaner. I think that contains a lot hexane. £20   5 las. Leaves no residue.

I got onto that about a year ago WW . 5 litre tins for 20 quid from motor servicing suppliers. I had a really sticky hairspring a few weeks ago, lighter fluid wouldn't touch it, it even got a short spell is an ultrasonic with elma ammoniated, still wouldn't unstick the coils. A 30 second swirl around in the lid off a tin of spray of the stuff made the coils free again. High evaporation rate similar to lighter fluid but without the addatives.

[watchweasol]

Worth the £20 . Can also be used to clean a watch, so double bubble.

[Indy]

Thanks for the comments, I really appreciate them.

I think I’m going to stay away from hexane, it’s only two atoms away from gasoline (octane), which means it’s a little too volatile to use indoors…for me at least.  Actually, I stay away from all the ‘-anes’ indoors.  (Except a butane pocket lighter.)

Brake and Clutch cleaner is acetone, at least here in the USA.  I’ve researched a little more, and it appears that a quick swirl in acetone will not damage rubies and should be able to lift off any old, dried oil.  I’ll experiment on the ST36 cap jewel if it has one, and let you all know.

[HectorLooi]

One of my frienda from a watch repair course I attended is a marine biologist and he has 2 young children.

He is strongly against the use of many of the chemicals used in horology. Citing the toxicity to both humans and marine life.

He ended up just using limonene (lemon oil) and IPA. Seems to work for him.

[oldhippy]

Ronsonol lighter fluid. It is also shellac friendly. That is what I always used to clean the balance. You need a small screw top jar as it evaporates quick.  

Edited February 17 by oldhippy

[RickTock]

I've found CRC Brakleen® Brake Parts Cleaner to behave much like One Dip when cleaning hairsprings. It seems to have no effect on shellac which is also good. Only downside is I can spot tiny little contaminants in the CRC Brakleen® under a microscope that I don't see in One Dip. They filter out going through a coffee filter though. So I need to experiment a little more to optimize my use of CRC Brakleen®.

The primary ingredient in CRC Brakleen® is tetrachloroethylene. One Dip is trichloroethylene. I'll leave it to the chemists to describe the relative cleaning merits of each. That said, limiting exposure to both seems prudent given their hazardous qualities.

 

 

[Neverenoughwatches]

24 minutes ago, RickTock said:

I've found CRC Brakleen® Brake Parts Cleaner to behave much like One Dip when cleaning hairsprings. It seems to have no effect on shellac which is also good. Only downside is I can spot tiny little contaminants in the CRC Brakleen® under a microscope that I don't see in One Dip. They filter out going through a coffee filter though. So I need to experiment a little more to optimize my use of CRC Brakleen®.

The primary ingredient in CRC Brakleen® is tetrachloroethylene. One Dip is trichloroethylene. I'll leave it to the chemists to describe the relative cleaning merits of each. That said, limiting exposure to both seems prudent given their hazardous qualities.

 

 

 It has a very distinctive smell that fills laundrette buildings.  I remember I loved it as a kid waiting for the washers and driers to finish the week's dirty clothes.  My bottle of perc smells just like it. 

[casedegroot]

I always wondered why special processes for these two parts. I mean, you dont want to run them though an ultrasonic, I get that, and long soaks in alcohols are not really nice for shellac but I do manual cleaning and these parts become as clean as all the other ones with Naphta and then IPA rinses. The drug store IPA leaves a bit of residue though - on the cap jewels i usually polish that off anyway and i think its not enough to impact lubrication of hair spring performance but still - so I'm ordering  lab grade stuff to see whether that works better.

I'm also about to test Liquinox instead of naphta, just need some time. My quick test is to put some Molykote DX on a plate. If that readily comes off, anything will get removed by the cleaner .

[caseback]

8 hours ago, casedegroot said:

I mean, you dont want to run them though an ultrasonic, I get that

I don't .

Putting the balance complete in a small jar of haxane and placing that in an ultrasonic works fine. The fluid dampens the parts' movement, so there's no risk of damaging the part.

But, as already mentioned, these products are not very healty.. (as a general rule: the nasty stuff works best). So using proper ventilation is recommended.

Edited February 18 by caseback

[CYCLOPS]

there seems to be a formula for everyones likes, one-dip is hard to replace easily but I did see the Newell company has hairspring cleaner that seems less expensive, I have not tried this product though, it was shown on Esslinger's site in a metal can, I still use L&R and Zenith cleaners, along the cleaning lines I did run across a small cleaning machine on eBay that screws on a large mouth canning jar that could be useful for some......the basket too

[JohnR725]

12 hours ago, casedegroot said:

I always wondered why special processes for these two parts. I mean, you dont want to run them though an ultrasonic, I get that

okay I'm having a confusion here? So I'm assuming the two parts would be the balance wheel of the pallet fork? Then as I quoted above and you get it may be can explain to me why don't you want to run those components through an ultrasonic?

 

[mikepilk]

On 2/15/2025 at 11:30 PM, Indy said:

 but I’m hesitant to put the Balance Complete in the machine.

Why, almost everyone else does?

The common practice with shock protected balances is to have the balance mounted on the mainplate with jewels removed and put through the cleaning machine. I use ultrasonic with Elma cleaner/rinse +30s IPA. I must have cleaned about 150 and never had a problem.

If the balance does not have shock protection, I put it separately in a small brass pot (small enough so that it cannot bounce around too much).

[casedegroot]

3 hours ago, JohnR725 said:

okay I'm having a confusion here? So I'm assuming the two parts would be the balance wheel of the pallet fork? Then as I quoted above and you get it may be can explain to me why don't you want to run those components through an ultrasonic?

 

Sorry, I meant pallet fork and balance - specifically the shellac'ed parts. I always see people mention one dip and similarly "do not want in the house" level cleaners. but given all the smell I've resorted to running these two through my regular cleaning sequence (with a small exception - I make sure they don't stay in the IPA rinses too long, just pop it in, shake the part a bit, move to the next jar), and it looks all fine to me? Same for the cap jewels, a polish on watch paper seems to do more than any specific solvents (so while less obvious, I'm going to assume that pegging its holed partner is just as effective).

[Indy]

5 hours ago, mikepilk said:

Why, almost everyone else does?

The common practice with shock protected balances is to have the balance mounted on the mainplate with jewels removed and put through the cleaning machine. I use ultrasonic with Elma cleaner/rinse +30s IPA. I must have cleaned about 150 and never had a problem.

If the balance does not have shock protection, I put it separately in a small brass pot (small enough so that it cannot bounce around too much).

 

[Indy]

Sorry, I should have been more clear.  I am hesitant to put the Balance Complete in the ultrasonic alone, separated from the Mainplate.  I don’t want to damage the Hairspring.

[Indy]

20 hours ago, RickTock said:

I've found CRC Brakleen® Brake Parts Cleaner to behave much like One Dip when cleaning hairsprings. It seems to have no effect on shellac which is also good. Only downside is I can spot tiny little contaminants in the CRC Brakleen® under a microscope that I don't see in One Dip. They filter out going through a coffee filter though. So I need to experiment a little more to optimize my use of CRC Brakleen®.

The primary ingredient in CRC Brakleen® is tetrachloroethylene. One Dip is trichloroethylene. I'll leave it to the chemists to describe the relative cleaning merits of each. That said, limiting exposure to both seems prudent given their hazardous qualities.

 

Tetrachlorethylene and Perchloroethylene are the same thing, and I’m trying to stay away from both.  Perchloroethylene has an additional hydrochloride molecule, thus making it tetra- as opposed to tri-.

 

[JohnR725]

5 hours ago, casedegroot said:

shellac'ed parts

3 hours ago, Indy said:

I am hesitant to put the Balance Complete in the ultrasonic alone, separated from the Mainplate.  I don’t want to damage the Hairspring.

 

8 hours ago, mikepilk said:

Why, almost everyone else does?

what I find interesting with this discussion is when I was in school I don't remember being told not to run certain things through the cleaning machine sort of. okay technically not supposed to run anything painted dial hands dates indicator etc. but metal watch parts I don't recall ever hearing you can't run the balance wheel a pallet fork through the cleaning machine. So we had a variety of different machines all of them had ultrasonic. Then the second school that I went to we were running things continuously through the cleaning machine as we were practicing on practice watches versus the previous school where were working on customers watches. People would bring watches to the school to get them repaired. the only thing I remember interesting other than the Messiah the machine and the second school was that the timers for each the cycles had been taped at four minutes. In other words you could have gone longer but there was no need.

There are certain cautions though with cleaning. Like commercial cleaning product is designed for cleaning watch parts that would be the best. Homemade recipes may have undesirable consequences you will have to figure that out for yourself.

then commercial watch cleaning solutions typically have ammonia or something else like in the non-ammonia version will have something in there to make things bright and shiny. Yes bright and shiny watches a really nice but there are cautions here. the typical recommendation for cleaning products is room temperature. Then if somewhat time-limited because the bright and shiny chemicals will start to etch things or dissolve the copper in the solution. Leave it too long in the cleaner and it will not look clean and shiny worst-case the solution turns a blue-collar I assume that's the copper and you can frost your plates. The interesting lessons you learn in school. So typically when I was at home cleaning watches I would go between four and about five minutes.  So I found around 4 to 5 minutes for the cleaning bath seems to work fine things are bright and shiny.

 

8 hours ago, mikepilk said:

The common practice with shock protected balances is to have the balance mounted on the mainplate with jewels removed and put through the cleaning machine. I use ultrasonic with Elma cleaner/rinse +30s IPA. I must have cleaned about 150 and never had a problem.

If the balance does not have shock protection, I put it separately in a small brass pot (small enough so that it cannot bounce around too much).

when I was cleaning watches at home I didn't have anything resembling a watch cleaning machine. Instead I had a tiny ultrasonic machine with a beaker. So I can pour the solution in drop the watch parts in take the parts output on paper towel put the solution back in its storage jar pour in the rinse but the parts back in. Used a hair dryer for drying worked quite nicely.

Acquired a whole bunch of watch cleaning baskets of various sizes to hold all the miscellaneous parts. Anything bag I would string on wires. I have a picture below process works very well. As you can see this is a modern watch with the newer style shock protected balance system is so the jewels are in the baskets. Typically want to keep the upper jewels separate from the lower as there can be size differences. Then if the balance wheel was removed because older type I would typically string it on the wire as the last item so I can keep track of it and make sure they didn't set anything on top of it

 

hen yes I have seen multiple references typically on YouTube of the evils of ultrasonic and cleaning watches and the evils of a whole bunch of things with cleaning the balance wheels of pocket watches. But it does bring up an amusing problem of the Swiss who make watch cleaning machines. Quite a few of those cleaning machines have ultrasonic.

oh and unfortunately with the Swiss making cleaning machines they do tend to be very expensive. for instance where I work the owner purchased a state-of-the-art Swiss cleaning machine. So the state-of-the-art cleaning machine I'll give you a link to a video is really quite fascinating how it works and it makes really interesting sounds when it runs. This is because it uses vacuum to pull the cleaning fluid up into the cleaning chamber. Then as you'll see in the video uses two separate ultrasonic frequencies. Then because of the vacuum on the fluid the fluid will get into everything and yes it really does do a phenomenal cleaning job.

So the machine is using L&R cleaning solution and their rinse for two cycles. then we run into an interesting problem of the rinse solution. I had noticed this when is cleaning watches at home it wasn't evaporating. I was thought that was interestingin that school I don't remember a problem but I'm assuming that they change the formula used to be more environmentally friendly. One of my friends cleaning watches recommended a quick bath in alcohol which solved my problem. In the case of the Elma cleaning machine their recommendation was the last bath is isopropyl alcohol.

so here's a link to a video Swiss made to frequencies of ultrasonic and some isopropyl alcohol and it's designed to clean watches. Versus all the other videos on YouTube that will tell you this is evil and bad. One of the minor problems of YouTube videos everyone I guess has different experiences.

 

[rehajm]

14 hours ago, CYCLOPS said:

I did see the Newell company has hairspring cleaner that seems less expensive, I have not tried this product though, it was shown on Esslinger's site in a metal can

I use it for extra sticky hairsprings and it’s the best I’ve tried. I recommend staying away from things called ‘one dip’ in the US…

I also use Liquinox in my ultrasonic but I’m still using the L&R regimen in my Pearl cleaner for movements…

[mikepilk]

2 hours ago, JohnR725 said:

The interesting lessons you learn in school. So typically when I was at home cleaning watches I would go between four and about five minutes.  So I found around 4 to 5 minutes for the cleaning bath seems to work fine things are bright and shiny.

I used to do 5-10mins cleaning in my ultrasonic, but after reading your advice I switched to 4 mins cleaning (Elma Suprol Pro), then 2x 2 min rinses (Elma WF Pro), and 30s IPA. All parts nice and shiny and no damage