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All purpose solvent mixture

Started by TelePlay, July 26, 2018, 11:16:39 AM

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TelePlay

In addition to helping speed up the sanding process, the 10% Acetone, 10% MEK (methyl ethyl ketone) and 80% Denatured Alcohol solvent mixture has other uses. There may be others uses yet to be found but here are two more: cleaning cords and sticker removal.

I developed this 10-10-80 mixture for use when restoring discolored plastic phones and removing deep scratches starting with low grit sandpaper but somewhere along the way, being frustrated with whatever I was doing, tried this solvent mixture with great success.

A very good application of the solvent mixture is for cleaning cords, line and/or handset. I wet 4" square piece of high bite X50 Wypall synthetic clothe with the mixture and go through the coils on a hand set cord or pull a straight line cord through the cloth.

Paper towels are too weak and fall apart quickly. Cotton cloth is stronger, does not fall apart, but is too soft, does not provide the abrasive surface that the X50 Wypall fabric has.

I just did the lime green handset cord so remembered to take before, half done and after images. This is a one time cleaning and it was not washed off in soapy water first. It went from dirty as taken out of box to almost NOS clean and green with one cleaning.

Another great use of this solvent mixture is for removing stickers. Won't work on sticker residue that has solidified and become a rock hard part of the plastic (only sanding will remove that) but will take off most still sticky residue with or without the paper still in place.

This Trimline handset had sticky residue and a sticker, both removed using the 10-10-80 mixture and X50 Wypall cloth. This phone was right out of the box and not cleaned with soapy water before residue removal.

Only problem with paper sticker removal is plastic discoloration as seen in the after image (which also shows great improvement in surface quality (more shiny) after removal due to the affect of the mild ABS solvent on the plastic when removing the residue and one application of Novus 2.

I'm sure others have their own methods but this is being posted only for those who haven't found a way it do this fast and easy or would like to try something else, have at it. The combination of acetone with MEK and denatured alcohol provides the grease and oil cutting power of the ketones along with the water based alcohol to remove the water soluble dirt and grime. Cord do not have to be wiped off after cleaning, the solvents dry clean and the dirt stays in the fabric.

Posted here in case anyone is looking for another way to clean cords or remove sticker residue. I'm willing to pass on what works for me as long as selling off my inventory of stage phones lasts. When the inventory is gone, these tips will stop.

HarrySmith

Thanks for sharing. I have been following your chemical processes very closely. I hate sanding! I do not have any color or discolored phones in the lineup at the moment but I am excited to try it out. I appreciate you taking the time to post all this for the rest of us to try out.
Harry Smith
ATCA 4434
TCI

"There is no try,
there is only
do or do not"

TelePlay

Thanks, Harry.

I'm restoring 4 to 6 phones a week and don't have time to waste on hard, difficult methods so I look for ways to do something fast, easy and makes the phone look great. The internals are also cleaned and/or fixed as needed.

I get a couple of messages each week from eBay buyers after they receive the phone (in addition to feedback) saying the phone was much more than expected. Taking a phone from discolored, scratched and/or dirty to saleable does not have to be difficult and since it is a hobby where I will never expect to get my costs out of a phone, the buyer's paying $10 to $30 for a restored and ready to use right out of the box are getting a deal.

I'm not selling collector level phones. Most of my phones go to first time phone buyers wanting a style and/or color phone for daily use so my profit comes from the intangible satisfaction of knowing they are pleased with the phone. It's a hobby, not a business, for me so a lot of buyers are going to end up with very nice, run of the mill, pedestrian phones.

I work 6 to 10 hours a day, 5 or 6 days a week on phones (one at a time) and am constantly working on new ways, discovering new ways to do things, especially when faced with the dreaded "Oh, No!" Some phones take a lot of time, some less than an hour depending on their starting condition. I'm always learning something new so glad to pass what I discover on to members should anyone else want to find out about other ways of doing something and by posting will be able to do so well after the point where I have no more phones to restore.

Many members have their own way of doing what I do. Just posting what I do for posterity. May not be the best way, might be another way, but what I post worked and works for me. I find this 10-10-80 solution extremely useful so glad to pass it along.

Others are free and encouraged to start their own topics in the appropriate board to show how they restore phones, one of the original purposes of this forum - saving phones.

Here's another cord before and after comparison, just one pass with an X50 cloth wet with the 10-10-80 mixture.

FABphones

Is 'X50 Wypall Synthetic Cloth' a brand name? Not sure what that might be on this side of the pond. Could you pop a pic on this thread so we can see it?

Thanks.  :)
A collector of  'Monochrome Phones with Sepia Tones'   ...and a Duck!
***********
Vintage Phones - 10% man made, 90% Tribble
*************

HarrySmith

Harry Smith
ATCA 4434
TCI

"There is no try,
there is only
do or do not"

TelePlay

Quote from: FabPhones on July 26, 2018, 02:12:42 PM
Is 'X50 Wypall Synthetic Cloth' a brand name? Not sure what that might be on this side of the pond. Could you pop a pic on this thread so we can see it?

X60 Wypall's (not X50) work best. The X50 is thinner and works okay but fills up with dissolved plastic and wears through faster. X80 is quite stiff and hard to wrap around a cotton ball. I bought a couple boxes of X50 first because it was the first one I found on line but since have purchased 3 boxes of X60 from Office Depot so I'm just using up my X50.

I'm sure Kimberly Clark sells these in the UK and here is a link to the white (not colored) X60 sheets in a pop up box. I always use white so color is never a problem with organic solvents leaching it out into the plastic. Finding someone or a source who will sell you one or two boxes at a time at a reasonable price is the challenge.


QuoteDuring my last job, I noticed a special cloth was being used in hospitals to wrap instrument trays prior to sterilization. When unwrapping unused trays, I found this white cloth was soft but abrasive and started to save them for chemical sanding. When asked recently if I found a commercial source for this cloth, I began to look. I knew the hospital cloths were made by Kimberly Clark. The cloth is completely synthetic (contains no pulp or organic materials) and made by Kimberly Clark under a patent. They call the cloth SMS for Spun-Meltdown-Synthetic. Commercially, is it referred to as Hydroknit and sold under the brand name of WypAll. They can be found as X-50, -60, -70 and -80. These are related to the thickness of the cloth. X-50 is the thinnest and X-80 the thickest. X-60 is the same as the hospital cloth I was using and is just the right thickness to work well as a high bite chemical sanding cloth.

The best source I found for low quantity (less than 10 boxes, a case) is Office Depot which currently sells them for $9 a box and if you order 3 boxes, they ship for free (a $9 cost saving). Each box contains 126 sheets. One sheet can be cut into 32 2" square patches. One complete phone housing can be chemically sanded with 2 to 4 patches so one box of X-60 is sufficient for 1,000 to 2,000 housings. I use one patch until I quit work and then toss it starting with a clean patch and cotton ball when I go back to the project



     http://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=20168.0

FABphones

Quote from: TelePlay on July 26, 2018, 03:56:59 PM
X60 Wypall's (not X50) work best...

Thanks guys. Found it. Bought it!
:)
A collector of  'Monochrome Phones with Sepia Tones'   ...and a Duck!
***********
Vintage Phones - 10% man made, 90% Tribble
*************

TelePlay

Another example of using the 10% Acetone, 10% MEK, 80% Denatured Alcohol solvent mixture to clean a cord.

This yellow cord had dark grime on it that was quite stubborn to remove. Had to rub 3 or 4 times rather than 1 or 2 times on each coil, and since the phone itself had brown tar in all the usual places, it was probably tar on the cord as well.

After 45 minutes in the tube furnace, it turned out to be a very nice handset cord. This is a 24" coiled cord when coiled off of a WE Trimline.

Another great use of the 10-10-80 solvent is to remove cigarette tar from any kind of plastic. A small patch of high bite cloth backed with a cotton ball and soaked with the solvent makes quick work of removing caked on dark brown tar - some of which can be very disgusting stuff to look at much less remove and it's usually the thickest on the inside of transmitter caps and on the transmitter faces themselves.

An eBay buyer asked me how I clean my cords since she had one that needed cleaning. She didn't want to buy a quart can of acetone, MEK and denatured alcohol for one cord so I did a bit of an experiment for her. Mixed 80 proof vodka with acetone based nail polish remover (70% vodka and 30% acetone nail polish) and it worked okay. Took a bit more rubbing due to the high water content of the vodka (60% water and 40% ethyl alcohol), which was compensated for by increasing the acetone content to 30% from normally 20% total ketone volume. I tested it on part of the above yellow cord and this mixture resulted in the same quality of clean as the 10-10-80 solvent mixture. It would work in a pinch, for one cord.