[78-L] Cleaning lacquers

[Ken Matheson]

A gentle washing with a light amount of dish soap in lukewarm water seems to work for me. If you have hard water at your house, you will need to use distilled water. I try not to get the labels wet. If the records are a fiber based disk with a coat of lacquer, I don’t clean them. For drying, I use an arrow shaft suspended between two boxes. This way the surfaces don’t make contact with anything while drying. Dish soap and photoflow are wetting agents.
 
Trash in the bottom of the grove is a problem that cleaning machines may do a much better job at removing. I use a 3 mill stiles instead of a 2.7 original. The 3 mill seems to ride above some of the trash. I think one could use a 2.7 mill first to plow some of the trash out before using the 3 mill. I have never used a .7 mill (LP) to plow trash on a 78, but it may work. Maybe someone out there has had experience doing this and could comment.