A while back I bought a turntable and a preamp so that I could connect them to my digital interface (Firepod FWIW) to play and digitize records. I have a lot of vinyl that has been abused over the years. I recently went to look up favorite methods of cleaning records and came across this, which, for the benefit of those of you who don’t wish to click the link, is applying a layer of wood glue to the entire surface of the record, waiting for it to dry, and peeling it off along with all of the dirt, grease and other schmutz that gets in between the grooves. Has anyone here ever tried it with any success? Several other sites seem to corroborate the method. Is there another method that works better?
There’s several examples on youtube. This guy does all the steps. Then peels off the glue and you see the dirt he removes. This method is good for garage sale records that probably never been cleaned.
part 1
part 2
Before you try this with any valuable records, you should go to Goodwill and buy some old album for a buck and try it on that. Make sure this isn’t somebody’s idea of a practical joke.
Sure.
- Build an ISO 14644-1, level 2 cleanroom
- That’s going to take you a while, so get back to me when you’re done.
OK, I did a little research on this and right off the bat I found several apparently credible and possibly somewhat authoritative endorsements of this technique. However it does require some practice and EVERYONE says, get some junk record and see what results you get. Another common suggestion is to try different types of wood glue.
You see, that last bit is what got me. The stuff is basically an industrial chemical and in that context, no one worries about how pure the final product is as long as it will work as intended and expected (on wood, not vinyl). No one is going to dip their pinky into the Elmer’s glue bottle, touch it to their tongue and go ‘Oh yeah. This is it. This is the good shit.’
So it does indeed seem to be an option for those of us with a few hundred old albums, but damn it if I don’t keep thinking that this is probably the brain child of some brilliant but evil internet troll.
I think I can offer one worthwhile suggestion though. It seems that this method is popular enough that someone invented a product that is specifically designed to be applied to vinyl. I can’t post commercial links so google ‘record revirginizer’. I found it on this web page and the link is near the bottom.
There’s also the well-known technique of spraying old vinyl records with Vicks Vap-O-Rub, which is said to work very well, but only for certain specific records.
It works especially well for Vivaldi recordings, and other Baroque music of that era. But for most other music, it can damage the record.
So if it ain’t Baroque, don’t Vicks is.
Using a sponge dipped in a solution of water and mild soap works too. Just rinse in clean water, keep the label dry and allow the record to dry thoroughly. Much faster.
Glues Senegoid’s fingers together so he can’t type anything more like this.
Yeah, but if you used wood glue the only thing you’re going to do is clean his fingerprints.
I was going to call in the counter-terrorism unit for a level 4 paraprosdokian. But upon further inspection, I became convinced that it was probably a level 3 malapropism.
A highly enriched paraprosdokian can decigrate 3 or 4 Starbucks. An intermediate malapropism will mainly *illiterate *people who have already been exposed to elevated levels of semantics-derived cognitive dissonance. It’s a particularly gruesome way to go. They look like they’re laughing so hard that they can’t make a sound, but it’s actually their parasympathetic nervous system shutting down. Thoracic muscles like the diaphragm seize and the grinning countenance is due to the fact that the muscles used to smile are stronger.
It’s hard to floxum the hindset of anyone who would unrelish such devices upon one’s fellow critizims.
Note, perhaps a final rinse with distilled water or other purified water.
This makes a lot of sense to me. Most glues won’t stick to vinyl, but I would be afraid of tiny particles of glue breaking off and being mechanically held in the tiny texture of the vinyl. Besides, how do you know your prize album wasn’t made with some other grade of vinyl the glue will harm? I am sure over the years they used many different grades. I remember some very thin, flexible ones. I am a chemist and worked with vinyl for years. It isn’t all the same.
Adding a little dish detergent to the glue keeps it a bit more flexible.
I really wonder why a gentle wash with a little dish detergent and water and a lot of rinsing wouldn’t be easier though.
:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:
This is similar to a technique for cleaning telescope optics. In that case collodion is the stuff of choice.
I tried the wood glue bit. It works well if you’re careful. If you’re really careful, you get a record-shaped sheet of glue that will play, sort of. Since it’s a negative copy, it plays backwards from the inside out and half a groove off.
That being said, wood glue’s kinda pricey when you use that much of it. I think cheap white glue would probably work as well, but I haven’t tried it.
Hey, I liked it! (nitpick: you don’t spray Vap-O-Rub, you smear it.)
I’ve tried this with mixed results. I, too, wonder if the glue method has some advantage. And as for trying it on “garage sale” vinyl, I have plenty in my collection that either already qualify, or are far gone enough that it would be a small loss if the experiment failed.
I think there’s an abrasion issue. With the glue, you’re lifting whatever dirt and dust particles there are directly off the record. If you wash them off, you’re going to be dragging these particles across the surface of the record.
It’s not that far from how records are made - positive and negative images of the original lacquer master are constantly peeled apart from each other.
The idea of using wood glue goes back to before Internet trolls existed. I would be inclined to use a cheap white PVA glue anyway - the more interesting glues may have additives that can cause issues.
The big question with cleaning vinyl is removing any plasticisers in the material. This is why solvents are a worry.
There are a number of cleanng systems, and most are still available, albeit at higher prices. The Moth RCM (record cleaning machine) is still about - but at $700 is not for everyone.
The most critical thing is to not leave any residue - so rinsing with distilled or RO filtered water is important. The Discwasher system uses capillary action to dry the surface and avoid evaporation leaving behind junk. I always used this, and found it really good.
A bottle of distilled water and a drop of surfactant is probably one of the best cleaning solutions.
Roy Gandy - the founder and designer of the the Rega turntables used to say that if a record looked clean it was clean, and to avoid unnecessary cleaning.
I’ve done this at least a hundred times, and it works like a charm to remove dust/grime. Perhaps this is an obvious point, but it won’t help at all with scratches.
I’ve tried many types of glue, and Titebond II Premium Wood Glue is the clear winner; I wouldn’t recommend Elmer’s or any other Titebond version. I have a 13" or 14" cardboard disc that I cut out of a box, and I place that under the record to protect the turntable from errant glue drips. Then I drip the glue onto the record as it spins around on the turntable (steadily moving from the center out to the edge, so that it falls in a spiral), and afterward I smooth it out with a credit card. I let it dry for three or four hours, and then I peel it off, starting with a razor blade on the edge. It usually comes off in one piece.
As others have already said, you should first test this out on a few dollar-bin records. You’ll undoubtedly make a mess the first couple of times, and it takes a few tries to know how much glue to apply.
Happy gluing!