1 (edited by tossEAC 2016-10-06 21:13:12)

Here are some links to the most important products I use to repair discs.

iKLEEN – Scratch Removing Polish -- > http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/320304384793

Bosch 2609256291 125 mm Polishing Sponge Clamped --> https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0053PVU9W/ … E_AMZLdp_1

Bosch 1609200245 Lambswool Bonnet -->  https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B000R5K4FY/ … E_AMZLdp_3

Novus plastic polish 123 (amazon)  --> https://www.amazon.co.uk/Novus-plastic- … tic+polish

Novus plastic polish 123 (ebay cheeper) --> http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Novus-Plastic … Swv0tVTLNl

Kiwi Polish (neutral) (not the new version with carnauba wax) --> https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00CBUFS68/ … WS2CJEFW32

Brasso Metal Polish Liquid - 1 L (£9.99 cheep)
(leave to settle, and use the brown liquid top layer, amazing stuff) --> https://www.amazon.co.uk/Brasso-125760- … rds=brasso

Good deep scratch remover Silverline 675223 Loose Leaf Buffing Wheel, 100 x 15 mm https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B000NBVGKO/ … _dp_3?th=1

I just thought I would start a thread to let people know how easy disc cleaning actually is.

Its easy, the discs, 99% of the time work perfectly, reading full speed all the way. No random slowdown like when it is scratched.

And finally if you do the job properly, the end product is a disc that looks fabulously clean, and it is almost or really hard to even tell it has ever been cleaned/scratched.

Its easy once you know how, and have had a few goes at doing it.

I would like to share my wealth of knowledge when it comes to this matter, so if anyone is interested let me know, and I will post the relevant info you would need to do disc cleaning with near perfect results.

The main hardware you need is a Drill (DIY), buffing pads (Car Shop) and a couple of different polishes.

And once you have mastered it, it only takes about 10 minutes to do one disc from start to finish, and most of the work is done by the drill.

The best polish for the job, is Novus Plastic Polish 2, and also a clear shoe polish, which is very cheep, the Novus2 is a bit dear but lasts a very long time. I'm on my second bottle still.

He who controls the SPICE... controls the UNIVERSE!
The SPICE must flow.

Maybe worth to make a youtube video? smile

I was hoping you would be interested as I seem to remember I sent someone Brasso, but that might not have been you.

I know you dump a lot of games and that's why it probably interests you because you get some that are matted with scratches.

I could make a video, but not put it on you tube as I am banned from their smile Maybe I will try to make a video when a friend comes around as he can film it.

FIReB4LL could you add my 9 Jap Dreamcast dumps please, and my 2 Jap PS2 dumps, if you could, Jackal said you would possibly add them as its more your area of expertise.

He who controls the SPICE... controls the UNIVERSE!
The SPICE must flow.

tossEAC wrote:

I was hoping you would be interested as I seem to remember I sent someone Brasso, but that might not have been you.

It was me, still using it sometimes (though, I'm trying not not to buy scratched discs), very helpful. The only hint I can give about when polishing with Brasso - never ever put your finger into the center hole while polishing, otherwise, it ends with lots of cracks in the middle.

Stopped using Brasso a long time ago, your much better using clear shoe polish and novus2, the shoe polish does the work, and the Novus2 puts a really fine finish over the shoe polish, but you need a drill and a couple of buffing pads, the finish is like mint condition, and I am really considering doing a video.

I have been buffing the discs now for years and done hundreds, at first my choice of polish was different and no were near as good, but after a while I learnt what was good and what was bad. First I was using neat surgical spirit, and spraying it on, but the buffing pad just soaked it up and was doing very little.

I used to think, wear away the top layer to remove the scratches was the way, but that's near impossible anyway, and now I find building up the surface with coat upon coat of polish gets your disc back as close to new as you could dream of.

I was like you at one point I was trying my best to avoid scratched discs altogether, which is definitely the way to go, but not always possible so it helps to have a backup plan, I don't really mind if the disc is scratched, which is great because I can buy every disc in a shop that has ridiculously low prices like 50p or £1 come home, clean the lot and be almost guaranteed every one will dump like new.

I managed to get a Wii game yesterday when I was out looking it was £2 and was factory sealed, I would prefer that priced game as long as its factory sealed any day of the week. I am re-dumping it now.

He who controls the SPICE... controls the UNIVERSE!
The SPICE must flow.

We don't have Novus2 in out shops as well just like Brasso smile Shoe polish is an interesting idea, though.

F1ReB4LL wrote:

We don't have Novus2 in out shops as well just like Brasso smile Shoe polish is an interesting idea, though.

I think ebay and amazon both sell novus 12+3 I have never seen it here in our shops either, its sold as pinball polish, novus2 is the best and novus1 is a liquid so not great for buffing, for just cleaning a dirty fingerprint disc, novus 1 is ok, but I still prefer novus 2.

He who controls the SPICE... controls the UNIVERSE!
The SPICE must flow.

Make a video please. Also if you have some kind of idea how deep a scratch can be or not would be great.

Plextor PX-760A 1.07 (+30) : Plextor PX-716SA 1.11 (+30) : Plextor PX-W5224A 1.04 (+30) : Plextor PX-W4824 1.07 (+30) : Plextor PX-W4012TA 1.07 (+98) : Plextor PX-W1610TA (+99) : Plextor PX-W1210TA 1.10 (+99) : Lite-On LTR-48246S (+6) : Lite-On LTR-52246S (+6) : Lite-On LH-20A1H LL0DN (+6) : BenQ DW1655 BCIB (+618) : ASUS DRW-2014L1 1.02 (+6) : Yamaha CRW-F1 (+733) : Optiarc SA-7290H5 1H44 (+48) : ASUS BW-16D1HT 3.02 (+6)

9 (edited by tossEAC 2016-03-13 01:45:37)

Scratches 99/100 times are cleanable, but if you have a gash that's a bit more than a scratch it wont come out, so generally every scratch comes out but the odd one wont. This is because the original polish on a dvd is so incredible that its near impossible to actually mark the plastic, laser burn wont come out if its more than a little bit, that's when you bang your console while the drive is spinning the disc and the laser scratches the disc. So anything as deep as laser burn is a problem. Surface scratches even if its covered top to toe, side to side will come out within 5 minutes. The deepest scratches might take some extra buffing. I will see if I can do a video soon.

The reason I mentioned this now and have done in the past is that I feel its of relevance to redump.org members, as we all end up with discs that wont dump from time to time, we would like to dump, and now I have mastered the cleaning using nothing to fancy like a $5000 buffing machine, its well worth me getting a few people interested in maybe giving it a go them selves.

Basically when your looking it a disc usually covered in scratches, those scratches are actually/generally only in the polish, and using my method of building up polish over the mess, it basically puts everything right again.

One other thing I forgot to mention, it helps if most of your finger tips aren't dead hard, basically the type brikies and builders have because they use a lot of lime and concrete, but if you think you have pretty soft finger tips, then you can probably get away with using your fingers to rub the disc a bit, which is a key part to this buffing, the novus needs a bit of finger tip rubbing, but if your fingers are hard then you'll probably add loads more scratches.

If not you'll have to use just the buffing pads and the end result may no be quite as good. But the disc will still work even if you don't polish it with your fingers, it might just look a little less shiny.

He who controls the SPICE... controls the UNIVERSE!
The SPICE must flow.

Just thought I would give you some more info, this is regarding making them look nearer to new.

Just using shoe polish and novus2 can get them working perfectly and looking almost like you can't tell they have ever been scratched or cleaned, and by the way this is the hardest part, getting rid of scratches is easy getting them to look like new, or never cleaned is really tricky.

Firstly each disc or different system tend to be discs that are not the same, totally differently manufactured, they have some things in common but other things differ, I have found discs made in japan will often look more like new after cleaning, probably they are better made.

The discs that come close to looking really nice are Nintendo Wii, European discs are made in Japan, they look nice, Dreamcast also come up looking like new, xbox360 come up really nice as well, less nice, but still working perfectly are ps2 dvd + cd, psx cd, xbox (old) and Saturn, these disc types tend to show the buff marks more.

But the good news is I found a new trick, that makes all the discs look better, and I can confirm Saturn Discs now look Amazing, good news for some smile.

Anyway the trick involves Shoe Polish and Brasso, yes back to brasso.

The thing with brasso, is if you leave your tin of brasso untouched for 2-3 weeks it will start to separate, and a brown liquid floats to the top, which is what I use now to help get the polish looking amazing.

So if you have some brasso, pour it into a clear bottle, leave it alone and wait for it to separate. Once the brown stuff floats to the top, syphon it off into a different bottle, I used a plastic tube, and sucked it into the tube, put my finger over the end and then it stays in the tube, then put the tube in the new bottle and take your finger off and blow, until you have collected a fair bit or all of it, the other stuff is crap, contains powder, and is what scratches the disc, and just generally is no use, probably its meant to help shine brass metal, not discs, as far as I know brasso is now considered useless by most, but the brown stuff is good stuff, and I don't know what it actually is or were else you could get it.

Brasso only contains maybe 20% of this good stuff, so you wont expect your brasso to separate 50/50 this is normal.

Anyway when you have the liquid, and your at the stage when you have all the scratches out, you get your shoe polish on your disc, I get a little chunk and go round and round the disc until it is covered, you then buff it away to make the disc look shiny, but the new trick now is you get a dab of your new brasso liquid and rub over the polish once you put it on the disc, the brown brasso liquid instantly dissolves the shoe polish leaving a much evener layer, then you buff it a bit instantly, you do this 4-5 times using the same cotton wool pad to thin out the shoe polish every time, and buff the layer.

The idea is it liquifies the shoe polish (like having liquid shoe polish, which you can't get I have looked) making a more even layer, and its better to buff the disc as it gets it shinier each time you do a layer, eventually you end up with it near mint then you do the same old with the novus2 and the disc will look brand new. I have only really tried a few Wii games, and a few Sturn games, but I can see it not working for all discs.

For me the old method was good enough, but I can now barely tell the Saturn disc I have done, have ever been buffed or scratched at all.

Phew smile

He who controls the SPICE... controls the UNIVERSE!
The SPICE must flow.

I still have this Australian Gamecube demo disk that's badly scratched sad can you make a video please. I tried getting it buffed three times and didn't help. I know it's a long shot but would still like to try one last time using your method

Gamecube are cleanable, that's for sure. Making video that's difficult smile.

If I can I will try to do a video one day, my bushes have gone on my drill again, just ordered two more sets, won't be able to do any cleaning for a day or two.

The best polishing trick came the other day when I found out about the top layer in brasso, it really makes all the difference, it basically turns shoe polish into liquid shoe polish smile which I have looked for but you can't seem to get.

I got a Phantasy Star Online for £2 once badly scratched, got it working no problem, without any of my new tricks, also bought a job lot of disc only NGC discs, and all were badly scratched, got all them working too.

8cm discs are trickier, as the buffing pads are all 12cm, but if you hold it steady pressed in the middle of the buffing pad, it still works, just harder to hold the disc bang in the centre.

He who controls the SPICE... controls the UNIVERSE!
The SPICE must flow.

No worries thanks for that smile

CD/DVD Repair Machine smile

Another thing about Brasso, the one in the "toothpaste" tube is very abrasive even after removing the lumps, does not have the liquid layer, and will most likely destroy your discs rather than shine them up. Ironically, toothpaste itself seems to do a better job for lightly scratched discs (don't use the clear ones like Colgate/Macleans as it will only make everything sticky while leaving the marks on the disc).

Of course, if you have any worries about using these materials, always test it first on a crappy old CD/DVD you never use, or one which is already destroyed (e.g. a crack through the middle or disc rot/holes in data layer).

Got a new polish called, iKLEEN – Scratch Removing Polish. ebay

Anyway for me this has enough abrasive quality, but still be gentle enough to not ruin the disc.

I bought 7 Wii games, 6 I cleaned my normal way, and all worked fine.

But a Sponge Bob game still had bad marks on, I tried the normal way of cleaning but it gave up dumping round 160MB.

So I used the ikleen polish on my buffing pad that I use for badly scratched games, as it is not fluffy like the ones I use for polishing, but to cut a long story short a few cleans with the ikleen, and then buffed the normal way, resulted in a very nice looking disc that I am dumping now and needless to say its way past the 160mb point, regardless of whether it dumps or not, its definitely got it better, I looked at the disc after the final polish and it looks near mint, and I think all the scratches are gone.

And the discs that I use for new products and general experimentation are all ones that fail to dump even after many attempts to clean it. Makes sense then if it dumps you know your onto a winner with what ever it was that you tried before it was dumped 100%.

He who controls the SPICE... controls the UNIVERSE!
The SPICE must flow.

17 (edited by tossEAC 2016-05-28 15:00:42)

Got one Nintendo GameCube game working using iKLEEN – Scratch Removing Polish, giving the Wii game another go, after a polish it gave up 5 minutes from the end, first clean. Second clean looks like the scratches from the outer edges have gone, will be a 2nd miracle if it works.

Got the Wii disc working 2nd go, that's 2 in the bag, got a few more of the sort that refuse to dump, will give you any news, and hopefully we will get the odd new dump of these dead discs.

Got one more Wii game working, and one PS2 game, both games I had already tried a fair bit to get going, and in the end gave up, I even took the Wii game back to the shop, and they buffed it for free on their machine, but it still wouldn't dump, so getting this going quite easily using the iKLEEN is pretty hard-core, if a machine in a shop couldn't do it.

I did manage to wreck the surface on one Saturn game that had bad marks on it, don't know what actually wrecked it, think it was a combination of things, but its worse than it was before, I will probably try to sell it to a game shop with a machine, and let them deal with it. smile

He who controls the SPICE... controls the UNIVERSE!
The SPICE must flow.


Good little video, neat machine, but I think, my way is better, nothing to build, and probably gives a better finish, but still very interesting video, thanks.

He who controls the SPICE... controls the UNIVERSE!
The SPICE must flow.

Going to try my hand at some videoing tonight.

He who controls the SPICE... controls the UNIVERSE!
The SPICE must flow.

If anyone has built a small, medium or large collection of scratched discs and would like them restoring for free, let me know and we can arrange something, even just so you can see how a restored disc ends up looking, the ones I have basically mastered and can get looking like new are Wii, XBOX & 360, Dreamcast, Saturn, both PS2 and PSX will work as they should but hiding the fact completely that it has been buffed is much harder, you can tell a lot easier that they have been buffed, I really don't know why it is.

He who controls the SPICE... controls the UNIVERSE!
The SPICE must flow.

Make a video, please. This novus 2 is not available in Poland and import will be rather costly.

@ tossEAC - if only you were in Australia, I have about 50 scratched, undumpable and unsellable discs, if not more (and then I should probably count my DVD collection).

Three of the shops I used to get discs repaired can no longer do it - one place closed down (game store), the other place got rid of their machine (JB Hi-Fi) and the third place broke theirs and have never bothered repairing it (Cash Converters). And I am not paying $3-$5 per disc to have them fixed at a video or music store when in some cases the games themselves aren't even worth that.

all you need is the right tools, I could literally do it blindfolded and nearly every sort of game works fine and looks like new.

Heihachi_73 I was going to say I could sell you about 100 of the wii discs I have dumped all guaranteed working, for about 2 pound a pop, if you want, and I wont sting you on postage costs, probably only cost $30, their is no damn pound sign, because my laptop is usa, but I live in uk.

And you could always put your 100 odd discs on a spindle, and I could clean them for free, as long as you pay all the postage both ways, which wont be much small parcel, I don't really trust sending stuff by post, but I buy from Japan often enough and that always arrives, even stuff from the usa seems to always arrive in the end smile I'm quite capable of sending a large or medium parcel, without getting stung, as I would book the reservation with the courier online.

And if you agreed and the postage was stupendous, I would be ok to forget the whole thing,. you know, no strings, as I am not really desperate to sell, but could really use the space to buy more wii stuff. I would only be interested in keeping the stuff you don't really want if that helps.

He who controls the SPICE... controls the UNIVERSE!
The SPICE must flow.

Heihachi_73 wrote:

@ tossEAC - if only you were in Australia, I have about 50 scratched, undumpable and unsellable discs, if not more (and then I should probably count my DVD collection).

Three of the shops I used to get discs repaired can no longer do it - one place closed down (game store), the other place got rid of their machine (JB Hi-Fi) and the third place broke theirs and have never bothered repairing it (Cash Converters). And I am not paying $3-$5 per disc to have them fixed at a video or music store when in some cases the games themselves aren't even worth that.

Game Traders Highpoint offer disc cleaning services but yeah about $3 or $5  a pop not economical

Might have to give iKleen a try

If anyone is interested in doing the disc cleaning like me, and have at least 100 discs they would like to try.

It may be worth me putting together a cleaning kit with everything you need -minus the drill, all the prices for the stuff you need are in the links.

But basically it would cost, £15 for novus 1+2 (forget 3) £10 for one buffing pad, and about £10 for 3x lambs wool type, shoe polish is cheep, and I could supply some of the extracted brasso liquid for about £2, the ikleen is about £6 and then all you need is the rubber pads that the lambs wool bonnets go on probably you would get 2-3 of these for £10

So everything you need and more you would be looking at £50 and your own drill, other than that its really easy, you can't really fail as most of the work is done by the drill, ok their are some tips and tricks that will help along the way, but once you suss it out for yourself you are laughing.

Put it this way, I paid more for a drive just to dump PS3 BluRays, and I put this to way more use than that drive.

So £50 plus a bit of postage, and you have your disc cleaning machine.

Anyone interested in a kit let me know.

He who controls the SPICE... controls the UNIVERSE!
The SPICE must flow.