exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Hi everyone,

As I am restoring one of my STE in a custom way, i decided to do a paint job on the body. However, the keyboard looked really yellow.
Huge aesthetic problem.
In a DIY store the other day, i found some hydrogen peroxide (12%) and decided to try the Retr0bright Experience on two of my keyboards.
I prepared a solution of 700ml of hydrogen peroxide with 14 pinch of Vanish Oxy Action Crystal White, witch has some TAED in the fomula (2 pinches / 100ml).
I've put all the keys in the bath and let them stay in the sun for 6 hours. I've mixed them every 15 mn. I know it is a kind of a dirty way to do this, but it has succeed.

Have a look before : And after: The best is that i used the same mixture for the two keyboards, and the second one got out from the bath in the same whitened state.

Oh joy !

Good job! Yeah, the keycaps are safe to Retrobrite due to them not being dark-colored. Darker parts have the risk of blooming.

Yesterday, being a sunny day I did my first attempt at "retrobright" on my TT keyboard case.

In this case I used the peroxide solution in the "BBlonde" hair bleaching kit from Superdrug. It took the colour from "edam cheese" to "light clotted cream", so I'm going to have to do it again.

Atarian Computing wrote: ↑Mon Apr 23, 2018 10:25 am Good job! Yeah, the keycaps are safe to Retrobrite due to them not being dark-colored. Darker parts have the risk of blooming.

Thanks ! That's right, and that's also the reason why i haven't had the faith to do the whole body and prefered the paint.

stephen_usher wrote: ↑Mon Apr 23, 2018 6:05 pm Yesterday, being a sunny day I did my first attempt at "retrobright" on my TT keyboard case.

In this case I used the peroxide solution in the "BBlonde" hair bleaching kit from Superdrug. It took the colour from "edam cheese" to "light clotted cream", so I'm going to have to do it again.

Yes, it was a great sunny sunday !
It seems to be a good start for you, nice. For the keycaps, i did like this :
Pretty frightening, but effective in my case.
And yes : the keycaps float

The problem I have with the TT is that the keycaps (other than the F keys) don't want to come off and I very much don't want to force them as TT keyboards (and spare parts) are almost impossible to find. I may have to find an innovative way of doing the retrobright without removing them, but protecting the rest of the keyboard mechanism.

yeah, i know the st keyboard is really easy to dismount compared to the TT.
you are right to take care of it.