Scrubbing Bubbles. Works like a charm every time. Only thing is, be careful around decals.

beak wrote:

All I can say from experience is DO NOT let meths get anywhere near vintage finishes; nearly ruined a nice old S-C that way.

Bit of a cultural thing here, so I finally looked up meths, and I see it can refer to a number of ways of making perfectly good ethanol unfit for drinking, involving methanol or a few other compounds beginning with "methyl", and sometimes a bunch of other nasty stuff. The fiends. In the US mainly just "denatured alcohol" or simply "methanol", when that is the main ingredient. We don't seem to go quite so far in discouraging people from drinking methanol, and "meths" is more like to refer to a party drug.

As for unsuitable cleaners, one I discovered was Lysol brand disinfectant. Happened to have a can handy, sprayed a small area of crinkle paint and blotted it - satisfying amount of dirt came up. Sprayed a slightly larger area and let it soak before bloating - even more dirt came up, along with the wrinkles. Was left with smooth paint. Oops.

Thanks, TypewriterGuy, toothbrush will certainly work for the patient, but Scrubbing Bubbles is the stuff! An entire fossil atmospheric record of cigarette smoke - probably containing valuable information on inside office air quality for the last 50 years - was lost to science in a few satisfying applications as yellow run off. It did eventually soften the crinkle paint and give it a slight tack so a little caution is in order, but looked like new after dry.

Is methanol still available in US drug stores, or did I sleep through that revolution in product safety?

Repartee wrote:

beak wrote:

All I can say from experience is DO NOT let meths get anywhere near vintage finishes; nearly ruined a nice old S-C that way.

Bit of a cultural thing here, so I finally looked up meths, and I see it can refer to a number of ways of making perfectly good ethanol unfit for drinking, ................

Meths (methylated spirits) used to come in big bottles back when I lived in England, and it was a strong purple colour.  And -oh yes -  some people drank it.  Known as 'methos' they could be found on the front doorstep in the morning when you went to work lying comatose next to an empty milk bottle or two.  They mixed the meths half-and-half with milk (so you can imagine the violent violet colour of the cocktail) and it was know as 'Jack'.  I think if I ever had to live on the streets of London through winter, I'd be tempted to take a swig just to keep out the cold - but then again, no.
It was pointed out here that meths is nowadays likely to have some acetone in it, even though this is not stated on the container, and the stuff must be treated with great caution near typewriters.

Speaking of cultural issues, 'Scrubbing Bubbles' is a US product. I use Flash and a toothbrush on crinkle paint - it can take quite a few layers of cleaning to get it utterly pristine but it is SO satisfying to see the typewriter turn back to a nice colour.