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Boiling old plastics, De-Yellow, Regain Flexibility ??

Posted by: uniserver on 2013-05-15 11:24:59 http://classicoldsmobile.com/forums/interior-upholstery/50619-boiling-plastic-restore.html this is kind of interesting, He is saying boiling old plastics in water for a few minutes , it takes the yellow away and makes them flexible again, not brittle. Anyone tried this ? Man i would need a big pot to do a Macintosh Classic 🙂

Posted by: Gorgonops on 2013-05-15 11:50:41 It's an interesting thought, but I'd certainly worry that *if* you were to boil something as big as a case bucket it would get flexible enough to warp under its own weight, only to harden back up again into an unusable pretzel as it cooled off. Maybe you could use one of those turkey deep-fryer kits. The pots with those should be almost big enough and they're *relatively* cheap.

Posted by: uniserver on 2013-05-15 11:57:07 or I suppose start with a mouse or keyboard?

Posted by: krye on 2013-05-15 11:58:28 Boiling plastic is not going to do anything for the color. The reason's it's yellow is because the fire retardant's in the plastic shed O2 atoms after their bonds have been weakened by exposure to UV light. Boiling it will do nothing to put oxygen back into the plastic. In order to restore the color, you need to get the plastic to rebond with oxygen. This is done with peroxide and oxy powder. A.K.A. retr0brite. As far as restoring brittleness... I'd really have to see it to believe it. I can't see any plastic being restored by that unless it was right at the threshold of melting. But who wants to do that? You'd misshape the plastic. Parts would start to bulge and bend as it collapsed under it's own weight.

Posted by: Blinkenlightz on 2013-05-15 12:12:59 I haven't boiled, but I have a bit of a related story... I set out to clean up an LC-series lid that had various crayon/marker/scuff marks/etc on it - my approach was: 1. Goo Gone on marks, let soak 2. Rinse/scrub Goo Gone in running hot water with sponge 3. Thoroughly wash entire case with sponge and dish soap, still in hot water 4. Use "safe for non-stick pans" scour pad on remaining markings with dish soap until gone 5. Hang from basement rafters with twine for 3 days to dry I expected a disaster from the scour pad, but this case looks fantastic now. I swear it's de-yellowed, though not completely in the worst area toward the rear. But the whole thing is several shades lighter. I later read about the boiling theory and have been wondering since, but haven't had the time to test another case.

Posted by: uniserver on 2013-05-15 12:24:01 some pretty cool cars on that forum. 🙂 probably has a big block in it. one hell of a grocery getter 🙂

Posted by: MinerAl on 2013-05-15 13:37:58 You can literally cruise the vistas! I would guess that auto plastics are different than computer plastics? Things like seat-belt-spool covers were meant to be flexible in the first place...

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