Remove CD Scratches Within 10 Seconds..

Intro: Remove CD Scratches Within 10 Seconds..

This is by far, the most easiest, fastest, cheapest, effective and natural way to remove CD scratches and to polish metals. Too good to be true?, It is also a very ancient technique used to polish metals (circa 1950s) and this secret had been taught to me by my late grandma (about cleaning silverwears).

To start with, you'll need the following materials.

> Heavily unreadable scratched CD's
> Cloth (Any cloth will do, but preferably cotton or the ones used in eye glasses)
> Small Plate
> Ajinomoto or Monosodium glutamate (MSG, used to flavor foods)
> Cooking Pan w/ 1 cup Water and Gas Stove
> Dry Towel
> Water
> Dishwashing Soap

STEP 1: Pour in the Ajinomoto MSG and Water Into an Empty Plate.

Pour in the MSG and water into the plate, you'll see that I had just a small amount since this stuff can easily scrape off too much plastic.

You can add soap into the mixture, to easily speed up the polishing, since MSG is water soluble, you can have any variations with it.

Adjust it to your desired effect. THE MORE WATER, THE MORE FINE FINISH, THE LESS WATER, THE ROUGHER IT GETS.

Use less water to scrape off deep scratches, then add more water later to a fine finishing.

STEP 2: Start Scraping.

Put the cloth in your thumb and get a small amount of MSG mixture from the plate.
Using your thumb, scrape away the CD plastic from the center outwards then back again..
You can also do a clockwise and counter-clockwise direction or x-hatch, but do the scraping as fast as you can, till you get a mirror polish.

As you can see in the third picture, the CD's plastic is easily scraped in just 6 seconds.
The deeper the scratch is, the more pressure and MSG you would need to apply.

STEP 3: Wash and Cook Your CD.

After polishing, bits of plastics and MSG crystals needs to be cleaned, so you'll have to wash your CD with soap and water.

Then for real! cook your CD in a pan with 1 cup water for 1 minutes for best possible readability.
Take it out using a fork. Dry it out with a towel, starting from the center outwards.

Then It's done!

You can now copy away your CD's to your Computer!

Comments

[JoãoC2]

I think it works like sand, or any other abrasive, by polishing the surface of the CD/DVD and not melting it (it would n't be very healthy :-).

[Buskieboy]

When you "cook" the CD, what temperature do you do it?
Just a bubble or roiling boil or just a simmer?

[videogamemaster]

Yeesh. This stuff is abbrasive enough to buff out a CD, and we EAT it? Thanks alot Japan......

[eric m]

boiling doesn't work.

Buy buffer or drill and buy fine grit plastic polish at ACE.

that works.

[margie_mack]

I know dj's also use heat to make scratched cd's work, they heat the cd up on that little light they use to find cd's, just before putting it into the player. A strange method theat really works is also to USE A CONDOM AND RUB IT ON THE SCRATCHED AREA OR ALL OVER AND THEN USE A VERY SOFT FABRIC TO WIPE THE LATEX OFF, WORKS LIKE A BOMB LOL

[Ki1o]

would it work if i used salt?

[guitarmonk15]

It takes "10 seconds," but you need to cook the cd for 1 minute. Hhhmmmm... Also, I' not sure I want to throw my $200 windows 7 install disk in a frying pan (just wait, someone is going to start an argument about windows vs. mac, or something similar).

[r.srohan]

good!!!! but dont know what reaction is going to be happen as i had study chemistry subject 5year ago....................................

[Nova_Logic]

how high does the heat ned to be med high or low?

[maxim1982]

The boiling temperature should remain constant no matter what setting you put it on. You want it to start boiling sooner - put it in high

[DMarie]

MSG is abrasive enough to resurface CDs??? No wonder it causes health problems for so many people. Yikes. I can't believe we eat that stuff!

[Kev93]

MSG is just a sort of salt. All salt is abrasive.

[Kev93]

Come to think of it that comment looked mean. It was meant to be nice. Sorry.

[arirang777]

I guess the cooking is to remove totally any impurity from the surface and to make the plastic to soften a bit and probably "fill" or enhance those micro voids and else.

As a bonus, once your CD is back to life again, you can add tomato paste and chicken to the pot and enjoy the very first digital chicken cacciatore! =-)

Thanks for this instructable, supervillain.

[Top Dog]

Brasso Metal polish is the best, even better than actual expensive cd cleaners.

[Stew2]

I second the Brasso fix, works great! I have also used it on a watch face (Timex Expedition) that was rendered unreadable by blasting with fine abrasive. The Brasso made it look like new! I bet it would even take the scratches out of a cellphones plastic screen though I haven't tried it yet. Plus, I don't keep MSG around, my father is allergic to it.

[bmschech]

I tried this. It worked fine, but now the music on the CD's gives me a headache? :)

[Kait999]

What ever happened to just rubbing toothpaste on a cd to get the scratches out?, it's a lot simpler, not quite sure if it works as well, but at least it easier.

[ironsmiter]

ok, so the MSG acts as a varible grit abrasive(by adding water). What does the cooking do? I fear that any heat high enough to surface fuze the CD would also kill the heat sensitive metal coating(MAY work for pressed cd/dvd's but cd/dvd-r/rw's surely die a quick death this way, no? The water would limit the tempature somewhat, to near 200F but still... Andrew_Modder, i think has a slightly better idea... flame polishing plexi/lexan is a time honored method, and as long as you keep your distance, and work in short bits, the heat doesn't spread much past the surface being polished. Someone willing to burn a couple discs, scratch them to hell, and try this? :-)

[supervillain]

Back in 2002, I had an original Xbox, which have a Thompson drive that have problems reading DVD's. Someone from Ubisoft suggested in the original Xbox forum (2002) that to play Splinter Cell without experiencing the problems we'll have to boil it.. Then I tried it, and It just works! since then all of my OXM DVD's were working.. I used the boiling method since then, in all sorts of disc's. audio CD's, DVD's and even RW's and never failed me.. Boiling CD's, DVD's does work!