Master Piece

Spent some time yesterday morning dealing with a "master".

 

Ok, not that (but double super bonus points if that last one even makes an ounce of sense to you).

Just trying to find a master link on the bike chain that will let me open up the chain and take it off the bike frame.

Google tells me (and, as everyone knows, if it's on the internet, it must be true) that vintage 3-speeds do have a master link that easily removes to separate the chain at that link and get that chain out of the bike frame (not the case with derailer bikes).

Looking the chain over a couple of days ago--well, ok, not just looking, more like wanting to get the stupid thing off the bike but not sure how since there are no visible clips and I don't have (and don't want to spend the money to buy) a chain tool to remove just any random link, I didn't find anything that looked very likely.

But, I did find this link (the internet kind) which talks about a different kind of master link that looks (to the untrained eye, at least--ask me how I know) pretty much like every other link but a bit more oval than hourglass-ish.

With that in mind, I took another look and found this:

Ta-da! a master link of the super-secret kind (and, yes, it does look pretty super obvious in this picture, but believe me it was harder before, honest!  Knowing what you're looking for does help a lot).

After that, it was pretty easy to gently push the link off with a screwdriver and take the open chain right off the bike:

The chain is pretty grungy:

And not necessarily worth saving--it's not some special size or shape or anything, just a standard BMX style 1/2" x 1/8" chain--but it does have the advantage of being already paid for and in my possession. So I soaked it in a bowl of degreaser (I've been using a supposedly safer biodegradable one) for the afternoon:

which actually looked kind of pretty for about 3 minutes until it started showing little flows of greasiness from the chain on out.

After it soaked, I went over it with the toothbrush and rubbed off everything with a couple of clean rags.

The chain looked much better:

but there are 6 links that are firmly stuck and just won't budge.  Not worth a whole lot more effort, but probably barely still worth a spritz or 2 of WD40 and time to soak in overnight to see if that did anything for it.

 

But while it did loosen up some of the links that were frozen, it didn't do them all so it will have to be a new chain before this thing is ready to ride.