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My grandpa's old radio taught me the real value of a pencil eraser
I was over at my grandpa's place in Toledo last spring, trying to fix his old 1970s Panasonic radio that kept cutting out. He watched me for a bit, then just said, 'Kid, stop poking at the circuit board with that metal pick.' He went and got a regular pencil with a clean eraser. He had me gently rub it over the volume control's carbon track inside the radio. I thought he was nuts, but after about five minutes of careful cleaning, the static was totally gone. He explained that the graphite in the eraser cleans off the oxidation without scratching anything, a trick he learned fixing army radios. It saved me from ordering a whole new part. Has anyone else found a weird household item that fixes a specific old tech problem?
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