Howdy folks,

New member but a reader of the site for years. I made one fairly nice Graphic from three marginal ones back in the early 90's. I used it as my primary shooter for a long time. I just pulled it out and the batter in the "focus at night 'laser' focus" system blew up. The leather and the bakelite(?) is covered in the remains of that good for nothing battery:) Anyone have a best practice for cleaning this mess up? Thought I'd check before storming in with tanks and carpet bombing. Thanks in advance.

Mike

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: 45PSS on 2005-12-24 20:58 ]</font>

Sorry to hear about that Mike. I've had to clean up after bad batteries many times, so I'll offer what little advice I can, which may be very obvious...

If you know what kind of batteries they were you're in good shape.

Most probably they were alkaline like all modern batteries. If so, then simply use some ordinary vinegar for the cleanup. It will probaly fizz a bit. Keep using vinegar until it's clean and doesn't fizz. It's a good idea to clean up the vinegar after that. Depending on how you are, you could switch over to a baking soda wash to get rid of any acid left over. After that, I usually do a light oil wipe to help prevent any further corrosion. I generally use Ballistol.

if the batteries happen to be the told carbon type, they were acid based. This you would not use vinegar on. Go right for the baking soda wash, then oil.

It's all pretty simple. Just a lot of tedium getting into the little nooks and crannies to get everything clean. Q-Tips work wonders. And better than that are the wooden stick variety sold in places like Radio Shack with the long stems to get into more places...

Good luck with it!

I've been reading this with interest, as I'm one of the lazy ones who doesn't always remember to remove the batteries for long-term storage. Even though I know I should.

Just an observation on the Q-tip thing. They are great little helpers, no doubt about it, but they also have an annoying tendency to leave minute strands of their fibre tips hung up on any surface they have contacted, especially sharp edges, corners, etc. Sometimes you can blow this fluff out with a blast of canned air, other times tweezers work. Obviously this is a concern wherever electrical contacts are involved.

For final polishing of contacts, an ordinary lead pencil eraser is handy. Even better, if you can still get them, are the pencil-shaped typewriter erasers. These can be sharpened when the points wear down. The abrasive in them seems a bit more aggressive than in the pencil erasers.