Made a little headway today. I blew out the whole works with my air compressor and rid the poor thing of decades of dust and dirt.

After that I spot-sprayed some solvent-based penetrating oil here-and-there to free up some sticky/seized parts and flush out a little grime. Also, I removed the remaining broken draw string and cleaned up the cylinder.

I think I figured out how to remove the carriage. I removed the front scale and afterwards it seemed to allow the carriage to slide out to the right. I stopped before taking it completely out because, well, frankly I got a little nervous thinking I was getting ahead of myself. I put it back together after cleaning the groove where the carriage trucks glide.

The marginal stops now move and the bell works again. Kinda neat to hear the little ‘ding’ when the carriage nears the end of the line. Of course without a return line connected I’m doing all this moving the carriage manually.

I’m hoping to get it separated into a couple pieces to make further cleaning a little easier. I still need to come up with a good replacement for the draw string.

Unfortunately, the draw band ends are long gone. There was a (broken) piece of string tied in place and it seemed small for OEM, but not knowing what the original looked like I didn't really know what to think. Here's the remnants of it:



I still need to do a little research on the proper band length and see what it would have looked like.

Thanks for the advise, though!