Hey nice thread.
I just wanted to add something about using coarse brushes for your base. In autobody repair when working on bonding plastics my buddy always uses sandpaper on plastic surfaces to open up as many pores as possible so the glue will set better. Using a brass brush to clean your base is essentially doing the same thing. Its good for your plastic if your concerned about absorption (and I hope you are).
So as we know, sometimes a hot wax wont get the all the dirt out of the pores of the base and using a base cleaner is just bad for obvious reasons. So we want to maximize the potential for cleaning our base. Here's what I think is best:
hot wax, scrape, use a brass brush to manually lift dirt from pores (think about it like how a person would exfoliate their skin), hot wax, scrape, reapply wax and its sexy time
Thats my deep clean method. I only do it every so often.
Also on the ptex tip, I just use a lighter. I got a nice method that keeps a perfect blue flame going on the ptex string while I slowly run it down the scratch. It drips right in and the ptex gets the perfect temperature to sit into the base. I've never had any pull out on me once. To smooth it down I use a sanding sponge (which is 10x better than using regular sandpaper) and a pack of razor blades from the hardware store.
My company also provides me with a home depot credit card. Its a beautiful little perk.
