Have you ever had an old computer that the
plastic had turned yellow or brown?
And you wanted to restore it to make it look
new again?
Well, for years it was thought to be impossible.
The culprit, of course, is ultraviolet light.
The more UV light that the computer or the
plastic is exposed to, the more yellow or
brown it's going to look.
Well, a few years ago somebody found out how
to fix the problem.
And I'm going to show you how to do it.
The irony is that the solution to the problem
also involves UV light.
Back in 2008 it was discovered that a combination
of hydrogen peroxide and UV light could reverse
the process, restoring plastics to their original
color.
Eventually, retrobright was born.
Its not a product that you can buy, rather
it is an online document explaining how to
mix and create the product.
One of the more difficult items to obtain
is high strength hydrogen peroxide.
The stuff you buy at the pharamacy that's
like 3%, just won't cut it.
It took me a whole, but I finally found some.
Not at radioshack, but Sally Beauty Supply.
They carry this stuff called salon care cream.
It comes in different strengths.
I bought the strongest one, which is 40.
Now, one of the challenging things about making
retrobright is that you have to add some other
stuff to it to make it creamy.
Because regular hydrogen peroxide is like
water, it would just run off.
And if you were to use it you would need to
have so much of it that you could actually
submerge what you wanted to brighten up.
Now the problem is, that's great if it's a
little bitty thing.
But if it's something big you're going to
need a lot of it.
So you want it to be creamy so that you can
apply it to the surface and have it stay there.
Now the great thing about this stuff that
I got at the beauty supply store is that its
primarily hydrogen peroxide, but it's already
creamy so you don't have to add any of the
other stuff that retrobright calls for, in
many ways you could say this is retrobright
in a bottle already ready to sell, you just
have to know where to find it.
So I decided to do a test on this old Apple
II color monitor.
It's a bit yellowed.
I decided to perform two tests, one using
a bit of oxyclean, because some people say
that this helps.
I applied masking tape but that turned out
to be a waste of time as it just soaked into
the tape.
I left it under the UV light for about 12
hours.
Now, even though the tape did not work, the
experiment was still a success as you can
see.
There was no different between the area that
got hydrogen peroxide and the oxyclean, versus
the area that only got the peroxide.
So my next test would be this old Apple IIe.
I started with the top cover as I figured
it would be the easiest to do.
I covered it with the cream.
Then I covered everything with plastic wrap.
Now the purpose of the plastic wrap is to
keep the stuff from evaporating.
I left it under the UV light for 36 hours.
I cleaned it off and put it back on the Apple
IIe to see how much difference there was.
As you can see, there is quite a difference.
So the next thing would be to do some of the
keys.
So I popped them off and took an opportunity
to clean them because they were actually pretty
dirty along the sides.
And then, I put them in the cream.
And then I put them in a ziplock bag.
Since it was quite nasty underneath the keys,
I also took this opportunity to blow some
of the crud out.
After 36 hours of UV treatment, I cleaned
the keys off and started to replace them on
the computer.
You can clearly see the keys now look gray
instead of the brown that they used to be.
I also tried one more test.
I know that macbook palm rests get kind of
discolored sometimes.
I believe its from people with certain lotions
on their hands that cause it.
I tried the same procedure on the macbook
keyboard but there was no change at all.
So apparently this does not work on that.
So yeah, I'm off to a pretty good start and,
um, I think in order to finish this computer
I'm going to need to, uh, totally disassemble
it.
So that I can get the plastics off without
having to worry about, you know, the motherboard
or anything being exposed to the chemicals
and whatnot.
But I think its going to look pretty much
original when I'm done with it, which is going
to be great.
And I've got a lot of other computers that
I need to do this to.
But, it is a time consuming process.
So, uh, maybe I'll update you on some of the
other ones I do in the future.
But so far I'm pretty confident it is going
to turn out fantastic.
I would also like to mention you don't have
to have a UV light.
You can use sunlight.
And I actually thought about that and one
of the reasons I decided not to is because
with the UV light I can position an object
exactly where I get an even amount of light
on all of the surfaces.
With the sun, you put it out and the sun is
going to change angles throughout the day.
And I was afraid I would wind up with an uneven
look to the plastics I was doing.
So you could give that a shot if you don't
have a UV light around.
but I chose to go the UV light route.
Till next time!