I got a new Macquarium yesterday from someone on Craigslist - for free (more on this later)! It came with an already modified SE case and internal fish tank.
The case looked its age.
A good friend of mine told me about Magic Erasers last year. I'd never even heard of them before, but decided to pick up a box in the hopes I'd find a Mac case some day. I was happy to not have to gut an old machine myself and take one someone else had already chopped up.
You take the "eraser" and saturate it with water, wringing it out a bit. Then you rub it all over the case with a bit of muscle trying to cover every inch over and over until you think a side looks good. Drying it with a paper towel will show you the results right then and there.
After 90 minutes of effort and about ½ a box of of erasers these are my current results.
Worth noting:
No sun. No chemicals or bleach. No marbling or streaking.
The erasers are very lightly abrasive, so they are taking off a microscopic outer layer as you rub them over the surface. I did have to take extra care around the screen-printed case badges. But they do such a fine job (pun intended) I'm extremely pleased with the results.
Thought you guys might like to know if you hadn't seen or heard of them yet.
They require some manual labor, but the results seem more predictable than retr0brighting. Granted, if you had an "orange" computer these wouldn't really help that much.
I think if I put in another hour or so this case would look quite stunning and the fellow I got it from probably wouldn't even recognize it!
I did discover during this exercise that the case has a few cracks in the front shell. I'm not entirely sure how to deal with those yet. One is dead center at the top. The other is on a lower corner where it looks like it might have been crushed somehow.
If anyone has any suggestions on a way to address these I'd appreciate some tips. I'm leaning towards giving the case another hour of work, then trying out some JB Weld Plastic Bonder on those cracks. Then the fun part - the aquarium!
The professional one is on the left, the home made one on the right (note the stands, and the seams). I'll probs use the pro one.