Figuring Out What Bugs Me About Sticking Window Handles

I recently had a comment made on a post of mine that all I needed to do was clean off the outside of the aluminum on the windows by sanding it with various degrees of sandpaper. So I wondered to myself, why bother to disassemble these old 1966 HR windows when renovating - this is why. 

I hose washed this window. I disassembled it’s pieces and acid washed it. I scrubbed it thoroughly. It looked clean. 

As I was cleaning the crank handle it still wasn’t moving very smoothly. I had already taken it off the window frame and been moving it around cleaning it for a couple of hours. 

So I peeked inside the darkness of the gear area that you can only reach if you break the rivets holding it closed which I don’t want to do and I noticed a “glob”.  I grabbed a qtip and scraped out this lovely batch of heads and body parts. 

No telling if they were dead for awhile or since my cleaning started but had I never taken the window apart my gears would have continued to have been hard to turn for a reason. Now they turn perfectly. I put it back to soak off the rust at the tip that’s hard to reach. I’ve still got more shining to do on it but thankfully now this window is bug free.