Tea Tea Oil as a Solvent?

Since it is a bit toxic

I suspect that it might often be sold in diluted form.

It is quite likely cut with a relatively inert non-toxic oil.

Limonene is another pretty good general cleaning solvent extractable from lemon rinds which is why microwaving a lemon cut in half in water is quite a good way to clean the interior of a microwave oven.

I found old brake fluid remarkably good for removing gone horrible tacky soft vinyl plastic finishes off things that had degraded.

ISTR brake fluid will pretty much remove *anything*.

I wonder if modern paint finishes are as susceptible as the older 1980s paints ?

Unfortunately wiki talks a lot of rubbish about most alt.med matters.

NT

Doesn't sound good but I wasn't planning on drinking it :-)

Having said that, the radio does have patches of the old finish which resemble a skin condition.

When I Googled the problem, I think the Tea Tree oil solution came from 'Mums Net' ;-)

Interesting. The little cloth-like cleaners for glasses you can buy from Aldi have a citrus smell. Perhaps they are based on Limonene.

I don't want to damage the plastic or remove the legends (volume, select etc), just the gunge. Alcohol is quite good but needs a fair but of rubbing in some areas- I suspect where the finish hasn't deteriorated. I could removed the innards and soak the case but I'm concerned the display may be a s*d to get back together.

We used to put a couple of drops of concentrated ti tree oil on a teaspoon of sugar and let it slowly dissolve in the mouth for bad sore throats.

I've used isopropanol (isopropyl alchol) and the solvent uPVC cleaner from Wickes to do this, with some success.

It's well known that it kills a fair range of infective agents. Huge number s of people have used it for decades without any significant problem showin g up, despite the wikibull.

NT

Boots sell it in pure form in 10ml or 20ml dropper bottles.

I just tried some on a cotton bud on some of that horrid soft plastic skin that goes manky after a few years, it did dissolve it as black gunge, not necessarily any more effective than other solvents you're likely to have lurking around though.