Cure for sticky black camera covers?

Tim Murphy said:
Dear Board,

After trying several different methods, it was suggested somewhere to use an Ethanol based scent free hand sanitizer gel.

I can report that it worked perfectly on that old Fuji HS-50, a Nikon N80, and a Canon Elan. Just rub it on with your fingers and give it a couple of minutes to work. Use an old white t-shirt to wipe it off. Bad spots may need several applications to get them goo free, but it works and all of the cameras are still perfect after a year or more.

Regards,

Tim Murphy

Harrisburg PA :)
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Yes, you’ll have to rub/wipe/clean off the sticky and the sanitiser components that don’t evaporate. I find that alcohol with water (ethanol or isopropanol) works as well but there us less to clean off. But also some plastics might clean better with the sanitiser gelling agents than without.

Whatever component of the plastic was releasing or forming the sticky goo is still there, too, so you may need to repeat the clean in future. My wife’s now nearly 25 year old (how can it be so long???) Nikon F100s need de-stickying every ~5-7 years.
 
Freakscene said:
Yes, you’ll have to rub/wipe/clean off the sticky and the sanitiser components that don’t evaporate. I find that alcohol with water (ethanol or isopropanol) works as well but there us less to clean off. But also some plastics might clean better with the sanitiser gelling agents than without.

Whatever component of the plastic was releasing or forming the sticky goo is still there, too, so you may need to repeat the clean in future. My wife’s now nearly 25 year old (how can it be so long???) Nikon F100s need de-stickying every ~5-7 years.
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Dear Freakscene,

I'm pretty sure there will come a time when a reapplication will be needed. But after trying just about everything and getting literally nowhere the suggestion of hand sanitizer was like a gift from heaven.

We had a white pit bull, and he bumped that Fuji HS-50 while my wife had it in her hand and it tore fur off of him. That camera took and still takes excellent pictures, but you had to pry it out of your hand. You couldn't drop it you tried it was that sticky. It cleaned up like new with the sanitizer.

Regards,

Tim Murphy

Harrisburg PA :)
 
Found this explanation on why this occurs on some cameras.

Interesting:
SOLVED: The body of the camera is getting sticky - Nikon D70
Natrual soft rubber will deagrade and return to its "Non-Vulcanised state". It is actually slowly "un vulcanising". Molecule cross links breaking back apart that were joined in the rubber vulcanising process, and becoming liquid in state. Handling or sitting, you can not stop natural soft rubber from "going back home".
The top surface is effected 1st which then deepens and deepens until you could wipe the entire rubber off with cloth after 25 years. More rigid high vulcaising rubber will powderise back to dust. (like 50 year old tyres)
Using alchohol will merely disolve and strip the top liquid rubber layer off, back to the "still rigid" rubber underlayer. You'll need to do it again in a few years.

Apr 24, 2017 by Andrew Thomson
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Bumping this thread after a month because I just bought a "mint in box" Nikon F70 for £15 only to find the rubber on the back was like glue.

Some methylated spirit on a bit of kitchen towel and some elbow grease started to take it off:

IMG_7752.JPG

...and with a few more passes followed by a final clean-up with isopropyl, the camera is now useable:

IMG_7753.JPG

It's a shame that the plastic underneath isn't exactly perfect. Does anyone have any tips for getting a more consistent finish across the back?

(Also: I wish I'd thought to check if the back was removable first BEFORE I started scrubbing. I'm not used to these "modern" SLRs, so it didn't even cross my mind!)
 
Coldkennels, if you were a guitarist, you'd not only want the guitar to look as battered and bruised as possible, you'd hope they'd release a brand spankin' new guitar that looks like it had just come out of a skip after being thrown in there 40 years ago, 'cos it would all add to the guitar's character and thus would make you a better player, so don't worry about a slightly patchy bit of plastic on your camera...
 
seany65 said:
Coldkennels, if you were a guitarist, you'd not only want the guitar to look as battered and bruised as possible, you'd hope they'd release a brand spankin' new guitar that looks like it had just come out of a skip after being thrown in there 40 years ago, 'cos it would all add to the guitar's character and thus would make you a better player, so don't worry about a slightly patchy bit of plastic on your camera...
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Oh, believe me, my (acoustic) guitar is looking incredibly battered after 17 years of use! It's some way from Willie Nelson's... but give it another twenty years and it might get there.

This is actually going to be a gift for my partner, hence why I wish it had come out a bit cleaner. It's her first film camera in many years - she has a Nikon DSLR, so it seemed like a wise choice.
 
For sticky plastic, rather than rubber, you can use a little bicarbonate of soda (sodium hydrogen carbonate) rubbed in well and wiped off with a damp cloth - obvious caveats apply near anything electronic!
 
Freakscene said:
The compounds apart from alcohol and water that moisten the wipes, the ones you listed in particular, won’t evapourate and you’ll need to then clean them off. They are added to dissolve and hold the fragrance (typically oil based) and stop the wipes from making skin feel overly dry because alcohols remove skin oils but don’t replace them with anything, so these wipes replace skin oils with moisturisers. Buy some plain rubbing alcohol and non-linting wipes.

Marty
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Word of warning. In the UK, ‘surgical spirit’ (which is usually equated with the US ‘rubbing alcohol’) contains 2% castor oil, as well as Bitrex (to deter consumption) and wintergreen. I don’t suppose that matters on camera cladding, but you wouldn’t want it on a lens.
 
Jonathan R said:
Word of warning. In the UK, ‘surgical spirit’ (which is usually equated with the US ‘rubbing alcohol’) contains 2% castor oil, as well as Bitrex (to deter consumption) and wintergreen. I don’t suppose that matters on camera cladding, but you wouldn’t want it on a lens.
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I am not from the UK, but that sounds like a quite diabolical concoction. And it may explain why my Trangia fuel bottle did some very weird things one very cold night in the Cairngorms.
 
Freakscene said:
I am not from the UK, but that sounds like a quite diabolical concoction. And it may explain why my Trangia fuel bottle did some very weird things one very cold night in the Cairngorms.
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But if you got it lit at all, it must have smelled nice, thanks to the wintergreen! You need a pre-heater clip to get a Trangia burner started in very cold weather.

‘Surgical spirit’ is intended for external medical use. Here in the UK, the easiest available Trangia fuel is ‘methylated spirit’ (aka ‘meths’), which has a violent purple colour and added Bitrex to prevent you drinking it in despair when your stove won’t light because you haven’t got a pre-heater clip. Excuse off-topic information. Don’t use meths on your camera lens either.
 
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Jonathan R said:
But if you got it lit at all, it must have smelled nice, thanks to the wintergreen! You need a pre-heater clip to get a Trangia burner started in very cold weather.

‘Surgical spirit’ is intended for external medical use. Here in the UK, the easiest available Trangia fuel is ‘methylated spirit’ (aka ‘meths’), which has a violent purple colour and added Bitrex to prevent you drinking it in despair when your stove won’t light because you haven’t got a pre-heater clip. Excuse off-topic information. Don’t use meths on your camera lens either.
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I got it lit. But it jammed the valve in my Trangia bottle. You don’t need a pre-heater clip, you just put a match in like a wick. It lit fine, but it smelled funny and it was sticky as.

Someone gave the surgical spirit to me, otherwise I would have bought and used meths, but the £2 or £3 it saved me was enough to me at the time that I used the half litre or so of surgical spirit I had been given.
 
raydm6 said:
Found this explanation on why this occurs on some cameras.

Interesting:
SOLVED: The body of the camera is getting sticky - Nikon D70
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So rubber grips on cameras will eventually become sticky, then powder, and fall off over the decades. Seems like Leica did the right thing with the original SL and TL bodies by milling them out of metal, rather than coating the grips with rubber. This doesn't make me very hopeful for the cameras currently in my possession... 😬
 
I recovered a Leica Digilux II for a friend last year. The original covering had gone soft and appeared to have swelled up in places but wasn't sticky...yet.

All very odd and teh way the camera is constructed seemed pretty odd too.

Anyway, he still loves all 5mp of it.
 
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