Restoring Over 40 Records, Which are all over 50 Years Old, Including Frank Sinatra.





I stayed with my grand parents thins weekend and after telling them about my recent interest in records, my grand father told me that he might have some ones lying around.
Now after asking him politely if we could search for these old records, and to see if the they are still in working condition, baring in mind they had apparently been untouched for over 50 years!
My heart sank we found them under the boiler, and the top half looked burned.

I took the huge pile upstairs and laid out some news paper, and went through every vinyl one by one, blowing compressed air over them, and them giving them a dusting. I discarded the first 5 records because they showed extreme signs of fatigue, and the top one was actually scorched! I then went by the rule, if there was rubble in the sleeve chuck it. I was left with roughly 15 records.
Now with a layer of dust covering all of the records I had to find a way to clean 5 decades worth of dust and muck. After searching the best way to clean a old record I came across a article claiming that you could pour PVA/wood glue over the vinyl, and it will peel straight off leaving the vinyl clean of all grime, and dirt. Now something to save you some money, wood glue is just rebranded PVA glue, and wood glue comes in at double the cost of PVA, so if you are going to buy some wood glue just remember this trick.
I stuck a circular sticker over the center label, and proceeded to carefully spread a even layer of PVA glue over the whole vinyl, and waited over night.
The following morning I peeled off the thin film, I found on some of the vinyls that it was necessary to repeat the process on some parts as to fully remove the dried PVA.
 Below are a few images of the process.









Overall I would recommend this method only for those whose records are completely covered in crud, but if you only have a small amount of dust then I would recommend using a brush.
Restoring Over 40 Records, Which are all over 50 Years Old, Including Frank Sinatra. Restoring Over 40 Records, Which are all over 50 Years Old, Including Frank Sinatra. Reviewed by Oliver Christensen on 08:14 Rating: 5

2 comments:

  1. tips: Use an old turntable platter to spin the record, and use an old credit card to spread the glue. Put a few pieces of scotch tape near the outer edge run-in groove to use as tabs to pull off the glue. Don't spread it too thin, or it'll break when peeling. Give it a day or so to dry. There's also this stuff called record revirginizer that basically does the same thing as this glue method, but it dries like a gel and isn't so brittle when it peels off! Works great.

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