Rubber for cleaning mats

[Dave Hughes]

Andy Taylor poses the following question, it's stumped me, anyone else got any ideas?

Dave when I was an apprentice I remember cleaning mats with a rubber of
what kind I know not, do you or anyone on the forum know of what type,
was it a special one, I've bought a load of Ludlow mats some are new
pristine but others are black with the usual comp room crap on. I tried
using my daughters college rubber but it took a lot of rubbing and ended
up nackering the rubber and cleaning one mat. I don't think I can afford
that many rubbers.

[Steve Young]

I used to soak the mats in benzine and then rub them shiny on an old vegetable chopping board -- came up good as new. Some comps were known to wash them with Daz, rinse them off and then put them in the sun to dry ... I always thought the benzine the better (and less lazy) way of getting the crap off. As far as Lino mats were concerned, they ran better down the magazines (course ... you have to clean the mags as well!

[Ken Smith]

The mat cleaning rubbers where I used to work were quite hard and a red colour, very similar to the ones that were used in the days of writing with a pen and ink.
I cannot see mats lasting very long using an abrasive block like railway modellers use to clean rail track.

[AJT]

Well done Ken
Yes they where RED I'm sure, but when I think back the only thing about the size of a rubber that I can for the life of me think of was those red magnetic quoin's holding the mats on the galley while you cleaned them - I'm sure them magnets was red!