Case Restoration: A New Approach
Sept 16, 2013 6:43:13 GMT
Post by smokemonster on Sept 16, 2013 6:43:13 GMT
I had a little success in case scratch/scuff removal that I wanted to share. Last night I tesetd various products on my battery cover trying to remove the white and grey scratches that plagued my latest Saturn purchase.
Here are two shots of it from the ebay auction:
Here's what I did:
1. I took Trekkie's advice and cleaned it thoroughly with Windex.
2. Completely disassembled the case and soaked it in luke-warm water with generic Oxiclean for 10 minutes, and used a sponge to clean it. The case came perfectly clean, but still looked terribly damaged:
3. After drying, I used Brebbia pipe and stem polish ($5 online) over the entire case, and lightly rubbing out the damaged areas. I applied 1/8 of a drop at a time and polished using a small paper towel. It took about 45 minutes to do the whole thing. Warning: don't touch any of the Sega logos with the polish or it might rub them off.
4. Cleaned with Windex again, leaving it beautiful:
I had the polish around from my pipe restoration work. It's typically used to remove oxidation from smoking pipe stems (made of Vulcanite, lucite, plastic, bone, etc) and leaves a polish roughly equivalent to 20,000 grit micro-mesh polishing pads. It excels on black stems, but you always avoid applying it over logos and inlays.
It worked nicely on the Saturn, getting rid of 95% of the damage. Only the serious bruises are left but none of the white remains, so what is there blends in pretty well. It also worked perfectly on the CD window, leaving it shiny and crystal clear. To my surprise, it did not polish the case to a gloss but left it more or less matte. No paint or black plastic seems to have been removed from the case's finish either.
I would advise giving this a shot if you have a really worn out case. If you're extremely careful, you may even be able to use pipe polish to remove a single scratch from a nice case.
Here are two shots of it from the ebay auction:
Here's what I did:
1. I took Trekkie's advice and cleaned it thoroughly with Windex.
2. Completely disassembled the case and soaked it in luke-warm water with generic Oxiclean for 10 minutes, and used a sponge to clean it. The case came perfectly clean, but still looked terribly damaged:
3. After drying, I used Brebbia pipe and stem polish ($5 online) over the entire case, and lightly rubbing out the damaged areas. I applied 1/8 of a drop at a time and polished using a small paper towel. It took about 45 minutes to do the whole thing. Warning: don't touch any of the Sega logos with the polish or it might rub them off.
4. Cleaned with Windex again, leaving it beautiful:
I had the polish around from my pipe restoration work. It's typically used to remove oxidation from smoking pipe stems (made of Vulcanite, lucite, plastic, bone, etc) and leaves a polish roughly equivalent to 20,000 grit micro-mesh polishing pads. It excels on black stems, but you always avoid applying it over logos and inlays.
It worked nicely on the Saturn, getting rid of 95% of the damage. Only the serious bruises are left but none of the white remains, so what is there blends in pretty well. It also worked perfectly on the CD window, leaving it shiny and crystal clear. To my surprise, it did not polish the case to a gloss but left it more or less matte. No paint or black plastic seems to have been removed from the case's finish either.
I would advise giving this a shot if you have a really worn out case. If you're extremely careful, you may even be able to use pipe polish to remove a single scratch from a nice case.
