How to clean the painted interior of a microwave?

[mm]

How to clean the interior of a microwave?

My sister burned some plastic in her microwave. It has a typical off-white painted, enameled?, metal interior, and it's gotten surprisingly dirty. Spray cleaners don't do much, I guess because they are meant for grease. (I cleaned the glass tray with a razor-blade scraper, but even with that, it was hard to get everything off.)

Soft-scrub products and iirc Bon-Ami use calcium-carbonate, which has a Moh hardness of 3. While I've used but never visibly scratched anything with either of those products, I don't think I've used them on painted surfaces. Especially in a hard to reach inside, normally just wiped microwave, scratches will pick up dirt and look terrible (if I bend over!). Even the Soft-scrub surface guide doesn't seem to recommend this**.

Talc has a hardness of 1. I have some of that, and some baby powder, somewhere and plan to try it, but ....

I see that gypsum has a Moh rating of 2. Can I make some cleanser out of a piece of sheet-rock? Pound it down to dust (wearing a respirator?), add a little water, and some kind of thickener??? This is a lot of work for one microwave, but it may be useful many other places. Maybe I could market it and get rich. OTOH, there are people who do nothing all day but work on new cleansers, and this is pretty obvious, so they must have tried this already. Still, maybe it is better for this particular purpose but not marketable enough that they produce it.

A) How should I make gypsum-based cleanser? B) What do you think of the whole idea? C) Do they already sell this and I've missed it? D) Comments?

** It recommends the product for enamel, but there is vitreous enamel (fired in a kiln) and enamel paint (which is also heated sometimes -- what is the difference?), and the first is a lot harder than the second. The Softscrub table has no entry for paint.

[hrhofmann]

I suggest first putting a microwaveable dish Filled with a couple of quarts of water into the uwave and letting it run at high heat for about 15 minutes,. That should steam up the inside quite nicely and soften the dirt up. Then a damp rag with just a hint of detergent on it should be applied along with some elbow effort to clean the unit. I have done this on some uwaves that looked hopeless, the steaming is the trick as it softens virtually anything that could be on the walls, battom and top of the uwave.

[Wayne Boatwright]

On Sun 02 Jan 2011 07:11:40p, mm told us...

Original Magic Eraser Sponge

[JIMMIE]

Used to know of a guy named Wayne Boatwright from Southern Georgia. Any chance you are he.

Jimmie

[Jon Danniken]

Same way you clean a window, with a weak solution of amonia water and detergent.

Jon

[mm]

This looks pretty good. If I see one, I'll get it. I already look once in a while at what the cleaning aisle has, but I may even look even farther for it.

[mm]

For those who have Agent, at least those using an old version, it's interesting to note that my sig here is for the english usage groups. By accident, I initiated the post and posted in one of them, then I took the same post and changed the newsgroup to this one, and posted it again. And clearly, it dragged the sig along to this ng too.

Thank you. I tried this, though only for 5 minutes and indded it seemed to soften the dirt.

I skipped the detergent and that probably slowed me down too. I will do better tomorrow.

But frankly, I think you sent me in this direction to get me off of my Really-Sof-Scrub, because you see a real money-maker. Despite this duplicitous behaviour, I'm not a person who bears a grudge, and indeed it shows that you are a go-getter, so if you want to go into this enterprise together, I would probably be willing to do that, even if uwaves aren't involved. I think we can start with this and maybe someday Hoffman and Meirman will be as well known as Proctor and Gamble.

[mm]

AIUI, my sister already spent time trying to clean this, but I will try this too. Thanks.

[Higgs Boson]

[...]

Hey, I'm -- or was -- using Agent 2.0! I never upgraded because I didn't see the sense of all those bells & whistles -- desks, etc. -- for my humble needs. Agent is -- was? -- a powerful and elegant email client I wish they hadn't chucked the newsgroups; that's partly what sent me into Google, Yahoo, etc. land.

I also hung out in an English group for years. Is that where you used to go? If so, did you ever run into the house Nazi, the one who runs the magazine for naughty words? Reinhold or something like that? Did time in a Federal pen for threatening a judge?

HB

[norminn]

If the residue is sooty, Magic Eraser will likely help. You don't explain what/how the plastic burned - flamed, melted, or? If it is melted on, then it won't come off with detergents.

Magic Eraser is finely abrasive, but I've cleaned greasy fingerprints from semi-gloss paint without causing visible scratches.

[mm]

I don't think it flamed but it did melt. However the melting was on the glass plate and not on the sides or ceiling. When I first looked at it, I only saw the bottom and the cleaner side. Didn't see the other side or the back until a couple days ago. But boiling water hs done okay so far. I'll do it more when I have time, maybe tonight.

I should have one of those, then. Sounds like it has lots of uses, including maybe here if necessary. (I don't insist on this being perfectly clean, but it's far too dirty now even for me.)

[mm]

Yes, he usually behaved okay, but something about his words made me suspicious. I saw him go off the wall once, like you say, and someone set him straight. (Well, set the record straight. I'm sure it didn't affect him.)

Yeah. Maybe I didn't know it was a judge. Because I thought it was amazing that someone did time for threats, when usually I suspect you can say you were kidding, say you were angry, would never really do anything, show your non-violent record (which I'm not sure he has), plead down, and get probation. But I do think it's reasonable to have stricter standards for threatening judges. They can't do their job if they are afraid of the people tried or sued before them.

Even then he must have been off the wall. And maybe he had pled down.

He mentions this, but not all the details, on his own webpage!

[Tony Miklos]

I'd put in much less water and let it boil longer. (I have done this) It would take one hell of a microwave to make much steam using a couple quarts of water in 15 minutes.

[Tony Miklos]

Auto polishing compound will do about the same and for the same price as one silly sponge, you'll have enough for a lifetime of fine abrasive cleaning.

[mm]

Thanks.

You mean rubbing compound? In the green can from Simoniz?*** At least it was green 30 years ago, when I bought my second can**.

Or some other polish?

**I bought my first can in 1964 to clean the '50 Olds my cousin gave me. I think it took 4 hours, or more likely 8, or maybe 4 for compounding and 4 more for Simonizing, but it was beautiful when I was done. A few years later some company talked about using their product to get a shine a foot thick. My shine was about 3 feet thick. It was like a mirror from 3 feet away, with my dark green car. ***I'm told that now if you use Simoniz rubbing compound it will take the entire layer of paint off down to some other layer. That's why I'm asking.

[Tony Miklos]

No, I meant polishing compound which is finer than rubbing compound. If polishing compound doesn't take care of it, then go up to rubbing compound. Also, if the rubbing compound leaves scratches or a dull spot, then go over it with the polishing compound to shine it up again. I know this is for the inside of a microwave oven which may not matter if it's dull, just adding that info for other projects down the road.

[Tony Miklos]

No. Polishing compound is finer, rubbing compound is more coarse. See other reply.

[mm]

Yes, good idea, there are always other projects coming down the road.

Things have come up and no time to work on the microwave now. But I'm sure it will turn out fine. If not, her plastic dirt will change in to my plastic dirt, in my head, and I'll use it anyow. It's bigger than mine, and I still haven't fixed my earlier middle bigger one.

[mm]

I was wrong about this. Bon-Ami, which is labeled "Hasn't scratched yet" includs Feldspar, which has a hardness on Moh of 6 !!!

And calcite, which I haven't checked yet.

That makes it softer than Ajax and Comet, that include silica (quartz), according to the Bon-Ami label which I'm sure is correct. My carton is 10 or 15 years old, but I'm sure nothing has changed with any of them.

And indeed, BonAmi doesn't strongly claim to not scratch painted enamel appliances. The label has drawings of bathtubs, sinks, and toilets, and the companies that endorse the product are Corning, Pyrex, Farberware, Rival, West Bend, Congoleum, a ceramic tile comapny and others like that. In other words, glass and ceramiic dishes, not painted things.

It is Soft-Scrub which has a hardness of only 3, and it too warns about using on painted enamel appliances, and says to use it lightly. I looked on the label of the container I had, rather than the sparse webpage. Why is the manufacturer's webpage not as complete as the label on the package?

So I will be looking for the two products that were recommend in this thread in the alt.home.repair ng. One a sponge-type thing and one I forget, because it was easier to find this thread in the other accidental newsrgroup than the very busy one.

I did use softscrub on an unfinshed shiny metal part and it did a good job and quickly. Plus even 409 does something on the rest but it takes a lonnng time and a lot of effort.

Just don't use Bon-Ami like I suggested, except where they recommend it.

And I still think I should make my own stuff out of gypsum (sheetrock), but don't have time right now. Join me, we can get rich!

mm

[zek]

Use a cup or bowl of water. heat to boil, let boil until everything is nice and damp. Let sit a couple minutes, then use a sponge and dish cleaner.