Quick Tip: Make Your Strobe Shine With Toothpaste
Here is a quick one, that I think has not been around the yet.
After using your strobe for a while, the plastic top will get oxidized a bit, maybe get some stains. You know, it just aint looking as it used to any more. The shine that your old relations used to have is gone.
Luckily there is a quick way to fix that. Using sulfuric acid toothpaste. It is an old trick used to clean beat up headlights, and it worked wonders for my strobe.
Here is how you do it in three quick steps.
1. Don't brush your tooth today. Save the daily dose of toothpaste for something way more important than dental hygiene.
2. Apply a small amount of toothpaste to a cloth. Now, this has to be the good ol' white toothpaste. Not that new age gel that everybody uses these days. Also don't go crazy, half a pea should be more than plenty.
3. Remember wax-on Wax-off? Turn out that this will not make you a karate master (Yes, I said Karate, that kong-fu remake is bullocks). Use circular motion to gently rub the toothpaste on the front plastic surface. Be careful not to get any in the creases.
There you go, a new shiny flash.
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Comments
I know this is a DIY site so
I know this is a DIY site so forgive me for reccomending an actual product here, but I have to say, a $10 3 stage Novus kit is designed for just this sorta thing and would be useful for many other plastic cleaning tasks beyond just the flash lens.
Toothpaste....
I use a similar technique to polish most anything with a screen, except I use a Dremel with a buffing wheel and a 2 part plastic polish from 3M. You can see a post I wrote about it here - http://hugger.us/?p=47 The toothpaste is definitely cheaper and gives your gear that Minty Fresh smell..... (c8
Flash Idea
Really?? Gonna have to try this one out. Thanks for the post.
The old trick
This is actually fun. I do this with my wrist watches and silver necklaces. It actually makes it shine.
Cleaning your Flash
Neat trick thanx for the info
Tooth Paste ... Consequenvces
Just think ... we've been faithfully brushing our teeth for years ... and the same abrasive which polishes a shiny glow on the strobe polishes away enamel on our teeth, leaving the enamel thinner and thinner ... until we notice cavities forming on our teeth. What works to help the flash shed more light ( tooth paste abrasive ) works also to polish scratches out of windshields ... and to remove protective enamel from our teeth. Now you know where the yellow went ...
I used to do this back in the
I used to do this back in the "old" days when my cd's needed cleaning, or when I was taking them in to trade at a used cd store.
cool
cool trick
http://arabianarcade.blogspot.com/
toothpaste is abrasive
won't this actually make thousands of scratches on the surface of the flash ?
Good tip!
I've used basic Crest toothpaste (has to be the paste, not gel) to clean silver, to diminish scratches on sunglasses and cds/dvds for years. Can't believe it didn't occur to me before this post, that it would also work for my camera flash. Thanks for posting this tip!
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