Rick says, "You'll have to ask Gary Heacock or Scott Rendal about the mustard stain on the 6.6 nylon. If I tell you, you're not gonna believe me." OK, I'm asking! What happened Gary or Scott? (This better be believe-able, since it is coming from you guys and not someone unreliable, lol)

Texas Tom

I have had good luck with stain magic and a D.C.I. light. Apply stain magic with no steam generator, cover with plastic and apply D.C.I. light for 24 hours. Stain removal results vary from complete removal to much improved stain removal. Depends on if customer tried every thing from oven cleaner to 409.... If they have not attempted to remove the stain I have a much better sucsess!

At Summerfest, a spot removing challenge was put on. Jeff Cross, the editor of Cleanfax put the challenge on. On each piece of carpet there was 10 spots of every day stuff anybody might find on any carpet, whether in a home or commercial setting. The only one identified on the chart we got was the mustard. We had a chart of where the spots were, and we had to fill in the blanks. It was up to the contestants to first identify what the other spots were. Some of us did, some did not correctly identify what they were.

Lipstick, green paint, A-1 sauce, wine, Kool Aid, black magic marker, White-Out, grease, etc.

Then after identifying the spots, we had 20 minutes to remove them, or as much as possible in the time allowed. We were teamed up, 2 people to a team, with a LOT of onlookers and kibitzers who offered advice, both incorrect and incorrect, the object was hilarity, and who could keep a cool head and do the work with a LOT of interference.

Talk about a customer looking over your shoulder while working!!

Anyway, I was teamed up with Neva Anderson, a VERY knowledgable lady. She started on the mustard, I started on the green paint. I used some POG, and some volatile solvent, and started blotting up the paint. Slow going, and filling the towel prety fast, but not making much headway with the paint. Neva used several things on the mustard, and also doing good, but not much headway and time was slipping away.

Rick offered some Releasit Encapsulating Detergent for the paint, which was maybe 10 to 20 percent out. The REL got the rest in seconds!! Real quick!! I was impressed!! Time almost up, I put REL on the remainder of the magic marker, and that was all out.

She switched to the White Out, as I recall, and had it out pretty quick. The grease was slow going, the wine and Kool aid come out pretty quick. The lipstick out pretty quick, I don't remember which one of us got it, but it was gone. Time up. What remained was to be judged by a panel of judges as to who got out the most in the time allowed, who damaged the carpet, if any- and there was some.

On Neva and mine, we still had a bit of grease not out 100%, some of the A-1 sauce not out, maybe 50% or so, and one other, I don't recall at the moment. The mustard was about 85 to 90% out, some still remaining when time was up.

Terry Brevic had brought his own bar of Fels Naptha soap, and used that on most of the water based spots, and got them all out. Kudos to Terry for ingenuity!! I don't know about residues, but the spots were gone. The Fels Naptha soap did not do well on the solvent based spots though.

Steve Smith and John Guerkink used their new red stain remover on the wine and kool aid spots, and boy, does that stuff work great for the purpose. Zowie!! Gone!! (Later Steve had a 4 x 10 hunk of carpet covered with 50 or so red spots, where he was doing a demo of removing them with his formula and a small steamer, this removed the spots in seconds, and I ain't kidding.)

Anyway, comes the judging. AARRGGHH!! Judged BY THE LADIES PRESENT!! Just like the REAL WORLD!!


Dom Agostino and Lee Stockwell WON!! These guys are AMAZING!!


Phooey. Neva and I came in THIRD!! (See the pics of the contest in the thread below.)

OK, later, there were 4 samples with the spots that had not been worked on. I know that mustard comes off with scraping, more than with chemicals. I picked up one of the samples, and with my fingernail scraped off some of the mustard in a line straight across the blob, to show how well it comes off dry with just scraping. Rick handed me a quarter, and with that edge, I could scrape off more than with my fingernail. Rick had the bottle of Releasit Encapsulating Detergent in his hand, and I -or maybe he- said let's see what it will do. I put a drop on the end where I had scraped some off, and agitated slightly with my fingernail. Whaddya know!! Gone!! I put more on the scraped area, clear across the line of scrape, and agitated, then toweled it off. HAH!! Gone!!

OK, let's see what it does on the not scraped areas. A small spot first. Agitate. Towel off. Hmmmmm. Took a couple tries, but THAT was gone!!

Try the rest of the non scraped area, agitate a bit, towel off. Gone!!

Now, the entire mustard blob, some 3 inches wide is all gone, except for a slight trace of yellow. Rick sez put it out in the sun, and let dry up a bit and see if the encapsulation factor will get the slight remainder. OK, did that. Went about other stuff for about an hour. Had another look, and being in the sun was now dry. Whaddya know- completely gone. Not a trace.

(This is a plug) After the contest was over, and other demos going on, I put on my demo of How To Clean Silk Rugs And Furniture. I used my own personal silk rug 2 x 2, and my own silk seat cushion. For the demo, since there was some Releasit Encapsulating Detergent just happened to be handy, I used that.

The Releasit Encapsulating Detergent worked just fine on both the cushion and the rug, and I feel perfectly safe saying to anyone that runs across these items to clean, to use REL, standard dilution, and it will do the job just fine.

One of the important things to know about cleaning silk is to use a neutral pH product, no strong alkaline or strong acid product, and you will be OK. Releasit Encapsulating Detergent falls into that category.

Summerfest Was FUN!! Don't miss the next one!! Gonna be in Portland OR, next summer.

Gary
PS regarding mustard. Mustard when it is made is a pasty white. Yellow dye is added for color. The yellow dye is a disperse type dye, and it is pH sensitive, and will change color when and if the pH is altered, so like pH paper, it can turn red or blue depending on the pH of the chemical used.

So, generally speaking when removing mustard, scrape off all possible DRY before applying any chemical to it for best results.

GRH

Thanks for the excellent update Gary!

It was a blast watching the teams hard at work on the samples. Some real pros showing their talents! It was interesting to see how the winning team of Lee Stockwell and Dom Agostino took the gold. Rather than relying on off-the-shelf products they relied on more old timey spot elixirs. They used things like Lacquer Thinner, WD40, Peroxide, Ammonia, and even some Trichloroethane.

Just one additional comment about the mustard spot that we removed with Releasit... I was talking about how Releasit removed the mustard stain with Bill Yeadon later in the day. Needless to say, Bill was impressed. So I went back over to the table and picked up a fresh sample of carpet with an untouched mustard stain and duplicated what we did with the earlier stain. But low and behold, it didn't work as well. So we're all standing around scratching our heads trying to figure out why the second sample didn't clean as well as the first one, when Bill Yeadon offers us the answer. The first sample that we successfully cleaned was a 6.6 nylon which has a greater dye blocking capability, the second carpet was just a type 6 nylon. So we also saw first hand how 6.6 nylon is superior to type 6 nylon when it comes to releasing dye.

Summerfest was fun!






Rick Gelinas

Bill is the man!
Knows his stuff

Don Eldred
Canadian Distributor for Encapsit/Cimex Carpet Care Systems

Yep, I can attest to everything Gary said. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself.

I threw a wacky theory together (there goes scooter again!) in a pinch.

Releasit contains solutions that accelerate disperse dye removal when UV light is applied. The evidence was the couple of samples with Releaseit placed in the sun for an hour or so.

It was a great Summerfest. Honestly the most fun Summerfest I've been to yet. Can't wait until next year!

 

$c00tEr