humble homemade brush - it works!

I have a pair of antistatic brushes made of carbon fibre -one from Stanton, one from Lenco-; they are great to perform dry cleaning, because of their antistatic properties, and for the soft nature of the filaments involved.
I have tried various types of less advanced brushes, made of pig hair, velvet, nylon etc., in dry and wet cleaning fashion, but none of them performed as expected, no matter how I played with the fiber´s length.
Velvet is good sometimes, and the little nylon bristles of hair-brushes made for babies is nice too, if properly sized with a electric scissor.
I must advice that all those experiments should be taken in the context of a manual cleaning procedure. I have no experience with vinyl discs cleaning machines.

But, as I have said, the results were on the ¨so-so¨ side, which is an unacceptable term for a serious vinyl lover. Thinking about a material with short, tiny and relatively stiff bristles, for mere chance I discovered something interesting in my own house: the weatherstrips of some aluminum windows that I have there.
These are ribbons of a plastic material that are made to fit in a slot in the windows sides, to seal the little clearance and avoid the entrance of wind, dust, etc.
These ribbons have, in one of their faces, a velvet-like material that isn´t exactly velvet, but a tiny mesh of short fibers oriented diagonally -some 45 degrees, more or less-. It´s difficult to explain the morphology of that thing with words, and I haven´t a digital camera in this moment to provide you with some images, but they´re a good thing.
I couldn´t obtain still the commercial name of that product, but I know that window makers call it ¨polypropylene felt¨.
These fibers are soft, rugged and of similar diameter of the carbon fibers of more advanced vinyl cleaning brushes.

Well, the fact is that I take some 20 centimeters -eight inches- of the stripes of one of my windows, cut it in two 10 cm. ribbons, and attach them with super-glue to a piece of acrylic to provide some sort of handle.
The results were excellent.
In a first instance, I tested the brush in dry fashion, watching for scratching potential, debris removal, etc. No scratches, and a debris removal potential similar (or better) than ad-hoc carbonfiber brushes.
Then, I performed some wet cleaning with a mixture of distilled water, isopropilic alcohol and surfactant (80%, 19%, 1%). Very nice results if the disk is, a posteriori, rinsed with warm water applied directly with the same brush, very carefully, until the cleaning mixture is eliminated.
For all of you who don´t fear to do some bricollage, I recommend this experiments highly. The improvement in sound quality and the decrease of surface noise are notable.
Cheers.

Federico