Groom stick is a registered trade mark of Picreator Enterprises LtdGroom/Stick is a novel form of natural rubber with specific properties combining to create a surface dry-cleaner of high efficiency. The rubber’s natural structure has been modified to make it permanently soft, kneadable and strongly tacky. Moisture, solvents and chemical additives have been excluded.
As a non-abrasive, non-staining cleaner with diversified uses including paper, library materials, archival paper to various metals and more.
Groom/stick is extraordinarily absorptive and retentive,gently but positively picking up a wide range of foreign matter. Graphite, carbon, charcoal, chalk, crayon, dry powder colours, mould spores, dust, dirt and grease are cleanly lifted off the surface and held in a ‘molecular trap’ from which there is no escape.
The process is fast and smear-free and demonstrated by lightly rolling a Groom/stick ‘cigar’ across a freshly-printed newspaper. Excess print ink is removed instantly – without blurring the print or soiling adjacent clean areas.
Ordinary solid or granular rubber/resin erasers abrade, smudge, crumble or produce clinging debris. Groom/stick sacrifices nothing of itself, leaves no dirty fragments to brush away (or mould spores to regenerate). Groom/stick continue actively collecting and holding foreign matter almost endlessly – until the rubber is several times its original weight. When surface soiling clogs its tackiness, the rubber needs only a little stretching, twisting and folding to enclose the dirt, immediately renewing its cleaning efficiency. Its tenacious hold of extraneous matter in large quantity makes the rubber a useful store for precious metal dust or fragments, which can be re-cleaned by incineration in a smelting furnace.Since Groom/stick ‘flows’ under its own weight or light pressure, the rubber is of special value in dry-cleaning engraved or worked surfaces, e.g. sculpture, arms and armour and jewellery. Pressed gently into the surface, the rubber conforms to any profile, ‘fuses’ with trapped dirt and peels away cleanly.
Over-linked or clogged type bars of typewriters are cleaned perfectly, without messy ‘fall-out’ or soiled fingers.
Many other applications will occur with regular use of the cleaner. For example, Groom/stick degreases surfaces to ensure efficient bonds with solder, adhesives or self-adhesive labels. Electrical contacts are improved, fingers cleaned and de-acidified before tackling sensitive jobs, flooded ballpoint pens cleared.
Groom/stick readily adheres to most solids. The bond, though good, is cleanly broken by rolling back the rubber. It is not suitable for long-term bonds on vertical surfaces, where it responds to the pull of gravity.
When not in use, the rubber should be stored between sheets of thick polythene of sufficient area to contain the rubber’s tendency to flow.