Deep Cleaning Records With Steam?

Readers : I have been continuing to Steam coupling the use of specialized Harmless Bacteria that consume organic materials found on surfaces and the groves of the recordings.

Experimental results far exceed what I initially believed possible. More to come and some notations on bacteria cleaning placed on other Record Cleaning/fluids Threads. More to come.

Crem1 - I was trained as a bacteriologist, did graduate work in microbiology and have been employed as a microbiologist. I'll be following this development with great interest!

What's the current consensus as to the duration one should pull the trigger on the steamer? 5 sec, 10, 15? i.e. what gives sufficient cleaning without damaging the LP? Tks!

John

Ghosthouse : Contact me by email

John of Sunnyvale...
I don't know what the concensus is, only what I've been doing. It probably takes me in the neighborhood of 10-15 seconds to steam one side of a 33 1/3 LP. I start near the center using a Tupperware-type lid to protect the inner label and go round and round toward the outside, stopping only momentarily to get past my finger that I'm using to hold down the lid. I'm still experimenting but quite often I'll steam several times per side (i.e., in between applications of cleaning solutions) followed by vacuuming. I also steam as a final "rinse" and vacuum to dry. It's a pain and may take 15-20 minutes or so to do a side. This fairly aggressive use of steam hasn't caused any damage that I can discern and some very noisy (lot's of pops and ticks) flea market purchases are now almost completely silent. In fact when the stylus gets to the runout groove that's been covered by the plastic lid and not cleaned - the noise is back and by contrast you can easily hear the benefit of cleaning.