Retr0Bright, Continued

After my generally successful test run with Retr0Bright, I wanted to use on some items from my "primary" collection, not just extras.  I selected three items.  First was a badly yellowed Capcom Fighter Power GS arcade joystick for the Sega Genesis – a great arcade-style stick that also works with older consoles such as the Atari 2600.  This controller, which I had purchased secondhand, had apparently been left out in the sun a lot – it had yellowed inconsistently and was now an ugly, marbled mess.  I also selected my uniformly yellowed late-model TI-99/4a, and my main SNES console, which had darkened considerably since I received it for Christmas in 1991.

I hadn't bothered to disassemble the first SNES that I Retr0Brighted, since I didn't care as much about how well it turned out.  I wanted to be more thorough this time, so I unscrewed it using a special security bit.  I also took apart the TI and the Capcom joystick.  I prepared the gel as before and put everything in the sun.  Once again, after about two hours, I wiped off the old gel, applied a fresh coat, and left everything out a few more hours.  Here are the results:

Much to my surprise, the Capcom stick – the most severely and inconsistently yellowed item of the lot – turned out the best.  The plastic had returned to a shiny off-white.  Even the area that had been protected by a price tag, and had remained mostly white while becoming surrounded by a sea of dark yellow, had all but disappeared as the shell reverted to uniform coloration.  It's hard to see in the photo, but there is still just a hint of yellowing in certain areas, but considering what happened to my TI/99, I decided not to treat the Capcom stick any further.

The TI obviously whitened considerably.  Unfortunately, there is "blooming" over its entire surface.  The bloom is particularly bad on the bottom part of the shell (not pictured), which is a darker plastic than the top.  I left the gel applied for too long.  I believe I made this mistake because the TI's original color is a shade of beige.  It's supposed to be slightly yellow, which makes it difficult to tell when the de-yellowing process had completed.

Even after a full four hours in the sun, the SNES was still partially yellow.  Luckily I had saved some gel, and was able to apply another treatment when the sun came up the next day.  Here is how the console looked after the second treatment:

It's pretty good!  Not quite as perfect as the console I whitened in my initial test, but that's not too surprising considering how much more yellow it was initially.  Best of all, there's no "bloom" whatsoever.

Now that all of my treatments are done and my gel has been used up, I thought I'd share some of the things I learned:

• First, make sure you have large containers for the activated and unactivated gel prepared ahead of time.  If you follow the original Retr0Bright recipe calling for 1 pint of hydrogen peroxide, you will end up with a hefty amount of the stuff.  Plus, it will tend to foam up a bit after you add the "oxy," so you need sufficiently large tubs.
• The gel is quite sticky (by design, to make sure it adheres to the plastic).  But that means it'll stick to other stuff, like your skin.  Be sure to wear gloves!
• Again, because it's sticky, the gel can be extremely annoying to clean off, particularly in areas with lots of nooks and crannies like air vents.  You'll need to use cotton swabs and/or toothpicks to get it all.  Some sites suggest running your plastics through a dishwasher on a cool cycle, but this only works if you can completely disassemble everything first.  None of my pieces were that easy to take apart, unfortunately.  I literally spent a couple hours painstakingly cleaning the gel (mostly from the vent areas), and was pretty thoroughly sick of doing it by the time I finished.
• Speaking of irritating: no matter how careful you are, there's a good chance you'll get a little of the gel on your fingers, particularly while cleaning it off.  It stings, but doesn't do any real damage if you wash it off quickly.  But if you have particularly sensitive skin, you may want to reconsider using Retr0Bright.
• Apply a little extra gel to the edges of your pieces, because it does tend to drip off.
• Wrapping the pieces in plastic wrap helps prevent the gel's drying prematurely.  However, it can be a pain to wrap your pieces, particularly while wearing gloves.  I found it convenient to put some wrap down before painting the gel on, then folding the wrap up and over the pieces after applying the gel.
• Watch carefully for "bloom".  It's hard to see it happening, particularly through the foamy gel and plastic wrap, and in the bright sunlight.
• Be extra careful when treating items that are supposed to have some degree of yellow or beige tint; it's hard to know when they're done.

Although I'm mostly happy with my results, I'm disappointed by the bloom on my TI.  Between this, and how tired I got of wiping gel off of my stuff, I elected not to treat my 130XE or VIC-20.  They aren't as yellowed as my other pieces, and I decided that Retr0Brighting them wasn't worth the risk or the hassle.  In general, that's what I would recommend: if it's only slightly yellow, let it mellow.  Items with moderate yellowing are the best candidates; severe yellowing is easy to over-treat.  SNES consoles seem to be very treatable... but honestly I wouldn't bother opening them up first; that just makes them harder to clean.

I'm glad to be finished with my Retr0Bright experiments, and don't plan to conduct any more any time soon.  I may again some day, but if so I'll probably try it with less powerful peroxide first, to see if it helps prevents "bloom."