Experimenting with different cleaners

I've heard many stories of players and friends using all sort of liquids to clean or rejuvinate their rubbers. I decided to put some of these to the test.

I found an old rubber (Dawei Sprungfeder A-4) which has had a lot of use and is well worn. It's now totally non-tacky and has even lost a lot of it's grip... feels quite smooth.

As you can see below I have divided up the rubber into 4 sections with masking tape, each section can be treated with a different cleaner so that we can compare the results. I know water will not revive this rubber, so I won't use this as a test.



Here are the 4 cleaners I decided to use:



I used a seperate cotton cloth to wipe the liquids in. In hindside something less absorbing and lint-free would have been better, but I don't think it will affect the results.

Thanks goes to hookshot, pongcrazy, LawOCG and a few other (see forum thread, sorry if I missed you) for all the excellent suggestions and advice.

The results are not as conclusive as I had hoped... all seem to work quite well:

Nittuku rubber cleaning foam:
The foam makes it real easy to apply and does not spill easy so less chance of a mess. It gave a good clean, restoring some of it's grippiness but no real tack. It changed the look of the rubber very little.

Orange power:
Since it's a spray it's a little messy, but it smells so good I was tempted to just keep using it Very Happy Laughing Very Happy . It does soak into the cloth and/or evaporate real quick, so I had to spray a few more times so that I could really rub the complete surface before it dried. As with the foam, it gave a good clean, restoring some of it's grippiness but no real tack. It changed the look of the rubber very little. It let some orange stains on the cloth.

WD40:
Since it's a spray it's a little messy. It smells a little toxic, so it may well have some nasties in it. It does soak into the cloth and/or evaporate real quick, so I had to spray a few more times so that I could really rub the complete surface before it dried. As with the foam, it gave a good clean, restoring some of it's grippiness but no real tack. It changed the look of the rubber very little.

Olive oil:
Since I had to pour some drop onto the rubber, it got a little messy too. I spread it around covering it with a very light layer. It seem to absorb quite quite quickyl As it was dry in about half the surface, I wiped it around a little more with the cloth which was still oily to cover it some more. It soaked in after about 10mins. This was seemed slighly better, and actually made the surface look a little better too. It will need some applications to see what more it can do.

So from this I conclude that for easy of use, I recommend the foam as it gives a good clean as any, and is the least messy. The oil gives the best result, and further and more oil may will offer better results again, but it's obviously not as good for a quick clean. For most enjoyable experience, the orange power wins hands down, since it smells so delicious! heh heh...

I will treat the whole rubber with a thicker layer of oil again, to see how much more I can do with it...