Cleaning sticky rubber off binoculars - suggestions?

[David]

The main suggestions on line seem to be white spirit or isopropyl alcohol
but these come with comments from some saying that they don't work.

Anyone here with direct experience of a successful method?

Cheap spare pair of binoculars kept in the car glove box, and many years
old.

Cheers


Dave R


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[NY]

"David" <wib...@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:f5bb17...@mid.individual.net...

> The main suggestions on line seem to be white spirit or isopropyl alcohol
> but these come with comments from some saying that they don't work.
>
> Anyone here with direct experience of a successful method?
>
> Cheap spare pair of binoculars kept in the car glove box, and many years
> old.

I'd try some sort of alcohol, such as surgical spirit or meths. My wife has
a computer keyboard and mouse which were covered in the same sort of
non-slip rubber coating on the wrist rest (keyboard) and the sides that you
gripped (mouse). After they had been left in the sun, they eventually went
tacky and horrible. Logitech (the makers) suggested using surgical spirit to
clean them. This removed the rubber coating altogether, back to the shiny
plastic, which removed the gooey stickiness.

White spirit or turps might not be a good idea - they may dissolve some
types of plastic.

[Iggy]

replying to David, Iggy wrote:
Old, oxidized rubber is best handled by sanding. Just like golf club grips.
Sand the rubber down to fresh rubber, wash with dishwashing liquid and dry.
You can fully restore the rubber to like-new with a 0000-Steel Wool rub-down
and get it back to smooth and shiny.

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[Martin Brown]

On 25/10/2017 12:31, David wrote:

> The main suggestions on line seem to be white spirit or isopropyl alcohol
> but these come with comments from some saying that they don't work.
>
> Anyone here with direct experience of a successful method?

I can't vouch for how well it will work on your binoculars but the
surprising material of choice for cleaning depolymerised gunky vinyl
plastic off things is brake fluid! I happened across some in my dad's
garage clearing it out and so tried it on an old scrap vacuum cleaner
handle that had gone yucky. Much to my surprise it worked really well
although afterwards the smooth gloss plastic wasn't as easy to grip.

>
> Cheap spare pair of binoculars kept in the car glove box, and many years
> old.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

[Andy Burns]

Iggy wrote:

> Sand the rubber down to fresh rubber

Good luck sanding a 0.3mm layer of rubber that's turned to gunge.

I find a Mk I thumbnail does the job of removing it for small areas.

[David]

On Wed, 25 Oct 2017 11:31:51 +0000, David wrote:

> The main suggestions on line seem to be white spirit or isopropyl
> alcohol but these come with comments from some saying that they don't
> work.
>
> Anyone here with direct experience of a successful method?
>
> Cheap spare pair of binoculars kept in the car glove box, and many years
> old.

Quick update.

White spirit doesn't shift anything.

Meths doesn't shift anything. (In both cases applying with a kitchen towel
and looking for black marks on the paper towel.)

IsoPropyl alcohol lifts the gunge but seems to evaporate too quickly to
clean up the resulting mess.

However by lucky chance I found that if the sticky gunge has been lifted a
bit with the IPA then meths will wash the resulting mess off. Polishing
the cloudy plastic with a clean piece of kitchen roll then buffs it up.

Not very pretty and some of the logos and stuff have lifted as well, but
there are no longer sticky bits to turn your hands black (except in very
out of the way "can't be arsed" corners).

Fortunately I found some IPA spray in an obscure "will come in useful some
day" corner. Also some meths I haven't yet got round to drinking.

[Martin Brown]

On 25/10/2017 14:29, David wrote:

> Fortunately I found some IPA spray in an obscure "will come in useful some
> day" corner. Also some meths I haven't yet got round to drinking.

Be careful spraying IPA about it is excruciatingly painful in the eyes.
Isopropyl Alcohol that is not the Indian Pale Ale.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

[NY]

"Martin Brown" <'''newspam'''@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:osq5ph$qu2$1...@gioia.aioe.org...

Lovely smell but it leaves you a bit light heated if you snort too much of
it :-)


Reminds me of when I was working in a chemistry lab during my year off
before university. One of the other students was expensively-educated at
"Mawlborough" (*) and was nephew of Lord Someone (he kept saying that he
seen his uncle at "The House" (of Lords).

This lad had a flash sports car when most of us had crappy old bangers or
even no car. And he described how he "started to feel a bit high" one sunny
day when he was driving along the M4 and "discovered" an open bottom of
ether in the back of his car (as you do!!). Ether vapour in air is hellishly
explosive, so this lad had a very lucky escape. He was into every stimulant
around: he would squirt fairly pure ethanol into his mouth from a wash
bottle in the lab, and he described the effects of taking home an ampoule of
GTN from the cyanide antidote kit. Having been prescribed GTN (glyceryl
tri-nitrate) recently as a precaution in case of angina, after a heart
attack, I can say that it had no effect whatsoever on me - I tried some so I
would know what side effects to expect if I needed it for angina (which I
haven't actually experienced).



(*) As opposed to "Marlborough" - why do EETs (expensively-educated twits)
have their own pronunciations for places (or peerage titles) such as
Marlborough, Althorp ("Orltrop"), Harewood ("Harwood") etc?

[Brian Gaff]

Now this is a perennial on this and other news groups. The problem is that
the material itself is made as part of the plastic piece it covers. Once it
starts to leech its contents, its going to carry on. I tried to remove some
from an old portable tape player a while ago. it seems that at least in this
case you can continue onward almost through the whole of the plastic part as
if it was kind of graduated from semi hard plastic on one side to rubbery
feel on the other.

I think if its one of those you are stuffed, but you may be lucky and its
just a coating something like 3M Nextel or similar where normal paint
solvents do work but underneath it the look is not good, normally quite
badly finished plastic.
Brian

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"David" <wib...@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:f5bb17...@mid.individual.net...

[Brian Gaff]

You are assuming its really rubber. In most cases these days it is not, it
may feel like it is, but its some weird plastic mix.

I managed to use Acetone on a handle once, but if you go too far no more
plastic.
Besides you can get high on acetone and never put it in a plastic
container!

Brian

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"Iggy" <caedfaa9ed1216d60ef...@example.com> wrote in message
news:nG%HB.16364$Uu3....@fx39.am4...

[Brian Gaff]

Yeah, I'm reminded of my old Neal Cassette deck where one day the rubber
pressure roller went very sticky, the next day ist was a pubddle on the deck
metalwork leaving a plastic centre on the spindle.
This machine will self destrut infive days?

Brian

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"Andy Burns" <use...@andyburns.uk> wrote in message
news:f5bgop...@mid.individual.net...

[Roger Mills]

On 25/10/2017 12:31, David wrote:

> The main suggestions on line seem to be white spirit or isopropyl alcohol
> but these come with comments from some saying that they don't work.
>
> Anyone here with direct experience of a successful method?
>
> Cheap spare pair of binoculars kept in the car glove box, and many years
> old.
>
> Cheers
>
>
> Dave R
>
>

Probably too late, but I've found talcum powder quite useful in such
cases. It doesn't remove the sticky stuff, but it stops it from being
sticky.
--
Cheers,
Roger
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[Jeff Layman]

On 25/10/17 18:33, Roger Mills wrote:
> On 25/10/2017 12:31, David wrote:
>> The main suggestions on line seem to be white spirit or isopropyl alcohol
>> but these come with comments from some saying that they don't work.
>>
>> Anyone here with direct experience of a successful method?
>>
>> Cheap spare pair of binoculars kept in the car glove box, and many years
>> old.
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>>
>> Dave R
>>
>>
>
> Probably too late, but I've found talcum powder quite useful in such
> cases. It doesn't remove the sticky stuff, but it stops it from being
> sticky.

+1

Just keep it away from the rotating parts of the lenses (for individual
eye focussing), in case it gets inside. It will also probably need to be
reapplied now and again.

--

Jeff

[David]

Ah, memories!

Fairly pure alcohol; that is starting out at 95% and used for fixing and
dehydrating biological sections on microscope slides.

A 500 ml plastic bottle of that and you could be very happy on an evening
out at the pub just buying glasses of tonic water.

No hang over either.

Kids today.......