Hi all,
         Just thought I'd give an update for anyone who is interested.
          I've removed 3 platens from my silver reed, empire Aristocrat (hermes) and Oliver courier, so all 3 platens of varying ages and rubber quality, they have been soaking in a mixture 4 to 1 rubbing alcohol and wintergreen oil for the last 4 days, now considering all 3 were more like Baker lite, the old post war type plastic, (forgive me if that's the wrong description but that's what I know it as) the hard brittle stuff of old, now there not like fresh brand new rubber like an tyre inner tube, but there is a definite slight improvement at this stage.
           What I didn't do however was give them a gentle rub down with emery paper, so I've taken them out today, dried them off and given them a light rub down with 800 grade, just take the shine off and open up the surface, in hindsight probably should have done this before soaking in the solution, live and learn, so I'm hoping this will make a difference, give it a few more days and we'll see.
            But as I said at this stage there is an improvement as I have a 4th platen still on another typewriter to compare and as I said, definitely a little improvement, if anyone wants to contact me please feel free and I can tell you what I've learnt so far so that you don't make any of the mistakes I made.
Regards
Mark