Getting the smoke smell out of manuals

[RickR]

From the Video Game Critic:

 

http://videogamecritic.com/extras/info/smoke.htm

 

 

[LeeJ07]

Speaking of preserving old manuals, sadly the Atari Trak-ball manual I saved from the trash awhile back was essentially destroyed back when the storm wrecked our house earlier this year.

[RickR]

Bummer, Lee.  It's completely gone?  Hopefully you still have a working trak-ball though!

[LeeJ07]

Basically. I had it stored with my Wii instruction manuals and the whole stack got wet. The trak-ball manual became stuck fast to the cover of the Wii manual, and all attempts to separate the two have proved fruitless. They just tear whenever I tried, so I've got two manuals fused together and completely useless.

 

The mention of using an hair dryer in the link you shared just happened to remind me of one of the suggestions for separation google turned up back when I was trying to save the two manuals. Needless to say, it didn't work.

 

EDIT: Now that I think of it, perhaps I ought to post a thread chronicling my efforts to dry out my collection, and what has worked and what hasn't as a helpful reference...

Edited August 13, 2017 by LeeJ07

[Justin]

From the Video Game Critic:

 

http://videogamecritic.com/extras/info/smoke.htm

 

 

That was a really helpful link, Rick. I've flattened pages before but had never thought to place dryer sheets in between the pages. I love DIY restoration tips like this.

[Atari 5200 Guy]

Speaking of preserving old manuals, sadly the Atari Trak-ball manual I saved from the trash awhile back was essentially destroyed back when the storm wrecked our house earlier this year.

which trakball model was it for?  there are a couple of different trakball models for the 2600 and 8-bits.

[CrossBow]

Wonder if a similar technique can be used to get rid of the other dreaded smell I usually encounter from games I find or receive. That is the basement smell?! Yeap...that is just as bad if not worse because it can also mean that there might be mildew/mold in the paper fibres that you can't see. I have a Telly Turtle manual that came with a CIB Telly Turtle I found locally that had this heavy smell of basement mildew. I was able to use my citrus cleaner on the case the game came in to rid most of that. The cart for some odd reason didn't smell nearly as bad and cleaning the contacts and along in the inside with a q-tip and alcohol seemed to make that go away. But the manual?! It is better, but what I did was basically just fan open the manual and have it sitting on a shelf in the game room. After about 3 weeks I checked it and the smell was much less noticeable. 

[RickR]

Wonder if a similar technique can be used to get rid of the other dreaded smell I usually encounter from games I find or receive. That is the basement smell?! Yeap...that is just as bad if not worse because it can also mean that there might be mildew/mold in the paper fibres that you can't see. I have a Telly Turtle manual that came with a CIB Telly Turtle I found locally that had this heavy smell of basement mildew. I was able to use my citrus cleaner on the case the game came in to rid most of that. The cart for some odd reason didn't smell nearly as bad and cleaning the contacts and along in the inside with a q-tip and alcohol seemed to make that go away. But the manual?! It is better, but what I did was basically just fan open the manual and have it sitting on a shelf in the game room. After about 3 weeks I checked it and the smell was much less noticeable. 

Mildew, smoke, and cat smells are the worst IMO. 

 

I have a Commodore 64c that smells like cat.  I've cleaned it, but it's pretty pervasive.  Nothing seems to work.  It's a lot better than it was.  But it's still there. 

 

And no offense to cats or people that love them.  Most of the time, it's not an issue.  But some objects just have that smell.  Maybe the cat used it as a bathroom at some point.  Who knows?

[TrekMD]

Hmm, this looks like a useful method to remove all sorts of smell from old manual.  Certainly the musty smell from storage is horrible and this may work for removing that.

[LeeJ07]

which trakball model was it for?  there are a couple of different trakball models for the 2600 and 8-bits.

Model CX22.