A Low Cost Way To Polish And Fix Lightly Scratched CDs

The steady increase in technology has given mankind more little frustrations than it ever dreamed it could cope with in one day…the pain it is to forget your email password, trying repeatedly to get the ATM machine to read your card to no avail, or lestening to your favorite part of your favorite song and it starts skipping! My God! What frustration! It’s enough to make someone want to flush a CD down a toilet-in fact, a friend of mine tried to do just that, and believe it or not, it fixed it. I wouldn’t suggest you do the same, unless you get really desparate (or really p.o’d), but if you’re faced with a similar frustration you might want to try what I do…

We’ve all seen those buffing-wheel thingys that advertise to fix scratches, just slip the CD in and turn the crank for about half an hour or until you have one big arm like popeye, whichever comes first, and you just buff the scratches out..I had one, and it worked, but it’s too complicated and usually too expensive. The same goes with those salves or creams or chemicals-god knows what they are- that you rub on and polish out, I’ve heard of people using the glasses-fixing juice advertised on tv to fix their CDs, with good results, but why? If you have a CD that isn’t scratched beyond all hope, and before you go spend upwards of $20 or $30 try this-find a white candle, unscented, and the more translucet the better-get a little tea candle that you can kinda see through on the sides when you hold it up to a light. First, make sure your CD is clean with a soft cloth that is also clean; you don’t want to scratch it further by dragging dirt across the surface. Clean it from the middle to the edge like you’re always told to do, then get the candle out. Make sure there are no metal bits or dirt and other dangerous things on your candle, if you have to use the tea candles that have the metal base, remove that and the little metal wick-holder. Put a coat of wax across the bottom of the CD, starting at the middle dragging to the edge-it doesn’t have to be thick, just coat it and polish off. Buff it with a soft cloth (hey, you’ve got one of those right?) and see if it’ll play…with me, nine times out of ten that’ll fix the problem, and it doesn’t cost me a thing; well, I had the candle sitting around already and just found a new use for it, but it shouldn’t cost more than 40 cents and you can use it hundreds of times. It won’t get those huge scratches that occur when yhou drop a CD on the pavement or play air-hockey with it, or whatever you people do, but it’ll get the superficial ones and it works on any media; DVD, CD-ROM, Game Cube, Xbox, probably even UMDs, if you can get it in the slot..

And if that doesn’t work, you can always get a $2.50 can of testors clear-coat spray-paint and put a nice coat on it in a still room and let dry fully-it’s a very risky procedure that I would only suggest using as a last-ditch effort on a CD that is about to have to be replaced at your expense-and that’s what I do. I hope it helps relieve one of the many little peeves in your life.