Today I tackled getting the springs back into the spring boxes, my first experience using sleeves with a spring winder. When I took out the springs, I couldn't get my home brew winding arbor to work, so I ended up grabbing the the inner coils with needle nosed pliers and pulling them out by hand. Getting them back in by hand I thought would be very hard, so I tweaked my home brew winding arbor to get it to work - did some filing on the hook. In the course of getting the springs back in I had to adjust how far out the hook projects a couple of times, using a punch to make it stick out further or just hammering it back in to make it stick out less.
I sprayed on Slick 50 as the lubricant, then used a small brush to spread it around and get as far into the inner coils as I could. When the springs were fully wound, I used a rag to wipe off excess lubrication.
Some things I found out the hard way:
1. You don't want to use the absolute largest size sleeve that will fit inside the spring box. You need a little more room to maneuver.
2. When you put the sleeve on the wound up spring, you need to leave the outer edge of the spring projecting out of the slot in the sleeve, or else you're sunk.
3. Getting the winding arbor unhooked sometimes requires getting in to the inner coil with a small screw driver to free it.
4. When you are first winding the spring, you use one hand to turn the crank, another hand to maintain tension on the hook in the outside hole of the spring, and your third hand to keep all of the coils of the spring lined up in the same plane. This procedure is a little more difficult if there is just one of you, which was the case.
5. If you put the strike side spring in the chime side spring box, you have to take it out again and start over.
Once I had all the springs back in I had trouble getting the main wheels to hook onto the holes in the inner coils, so again I had to get into the inner coils with a screw driver and a small needle nosed pliers to shape the inner coil to get it to hook.
Something like four hours later, I think I'm done this part.