Hardware How to remove smoke smell from surface pro keyboard

[qaz015393]

So I got a surface pro used and I noticed it had a smoke smell to it so after I took a Clorox disinfectant wipe and spent some time wiping everything down I found out that the keyboard smells of smoke (don't know if it's because of the blemishes/stains or what). I want to know what's a good way of cleaning and removing the smell from the Surface Pro keyboard. I got it to give as a Christmas gift so I would need some help asap please.

 

[FAST6191]

I assume you mean tobacco rather than wood/coal.

Getting smoke smell out of things, much less rubberised plastics/cloth and electronics you can't submerge in water, is an absolute bastard and not something I have really ever been able to accomplish well with standard household gear. It also depends how much smoke it was exposed to -- nice yellow tinged slime from a hotboxed thing in the house of a bunch of chain smokers being a different gig to a lighter affair someone had for a few weeks but carried it outside when they went out.

An ozone generator kind of works, however it tends to require another dose a week or two down the line. Similarly I try not to put that much ozone around plastics. If you are reasonably au fait with power electronics you can make an ozone generator but don't go zapping yourself for this sort of thing.

You can mask it fairly well. I have not seen it for a while but when doing refurb machines many will use a rather intense citrus (I have had both lemon and orange). I don't know where you might find such a thing, much less in short order on Christmas day. In a pinch a 24 hour petrol station that sells those nice car fresheners you are supposed to only open a bit at a time* should be able to yield some chemicals (wear gloves) that get there, though test it on a small corner first to make sure it does not stain or craze the plastic. Similarly those plug air freshener things that last weeks at a time also contain some fairly intense chemicals if you break the ampoules, break one outside and not over the keyboard, use a cotton bud (qtip) to smear some around the place like you were cleaning it.

*a basic chuck it on the rear view job not going to do that well. You do want the fun ones you have to progressively open. I suggest avoiding pine if you can.

Replacement is always an option but depending upon the model that looks like a rather expensive hobby at this point.

 

[qaz015393]

I assume you mean tobacco rather than wood/coal.

Getting smoke smell out of things, much less rubberised plastics/cloth and electronics you can't submerge in water, is an absolute bastard and not something I have really ever been able to accomplish well with standard household gear. It also depends how much smoke it was exposed to -- nice yellow tinged slime from a hotboxed thing in the house of a bunch of chain smokers being a different gig to a lighter affair someone had for a few weeks but carried it outside when they went out.

An ozone generator kind of works, however it tends to require another dose a week or two down the line. Similarly I try not to put that much ozone around plastics. If you are reasonably au fait with power electronics you can make an ozone generator but don't go zapping yourself for this sort of thing.

You can mask it fairly well. I have not seen it for a while but when doing refurb machines many will use a rather intense citrus (I have had both lemon and orange). I don't know where you might find such a thing, much less in short order on Christmas day. In a pinch a 24 hour petrol station that sells those nice car fresheners you are supposed to only open a bit at a time* should be able to yield some chemicals (wear gloves) that get there, though test it on a small corner first to make sure it does not stain or craze the plastic. Similarly those plug air freshener things that last weeks at a time also contain some fairly intense chemicals if you break the ampoules, break one outside and not over the keyboard, use a cotton bud (qtip) to smear some around the place like you were cleaning it.

*a basic chuck it on the rear view job not going to do that well. You do want the fun ones you have to progressively open. I suggest avoiding pine if you can.

Replacement is always an option but depending upon the model that looks like a rather expensive hobby at this point.

Thanks for letting me know. I don't know why it happened. I read to use a zip lock bsg, baking soda and a paper towel and leave it for some days but I don't know if it works since I saw a few other methods but they say use water and a fiber optics cloth and whipe it down.

Although I also read that it shouldn't be in sunlight. I honestly don't know what happened to it since the seller i got it from said they aren't a smoker /dont smoke and that FedEx ruined the order (which they did and usps did as well and i had a number of orders have smoke smell feom non smokers). I'm going to see if the computer store near me knows. If not I'll go and see if Geek Squad can help me fix it.
I have a genies system and a few games as well that slightly smell of smoke and I put them in a zip lock baggy sprayed with perfume for some weeks. It somewhat worked.

It's a gift like i said but I can spend time to get rid of the smell but hope that it does go away. I don't know what version of the surface it is so i can't say if i could just nuy a new keyboard (even though I'm trying not to spend more money).

 

[FAST6191]

A package that sat in the delivery driver's van for a morning might smell but the object in side should not if it was wrapped at all well. Coat something in bubble wrap and then seal it inside even a cardboard box, which is to say 95% of all such packages I have ever received, and things should be fine. Beyond that presuming it got sent in fairly short order (not a 3 months from China affair) then there should not be time for it to happen.

All the things I have had where the smell lingered were exposed to reasonable volumes over an amount more than a morning, possibly without decent ventilation.

It could well be that the seller is not trying to pull one over on you but as the great doctor once said

 

[qaz015393]

That's true too. Also it was only in a box with lots of plastic bags.
The person I got my genies from I knew smoked but even that I don't smell because its on top of my shelf and i still don't smell it. I don't know what An ozone generator is. I heard use vinegar to clean it. I still don't know what to try that'll work.

 

[FAST6191]

We will do the slightly science talk then so you can try to make sense of any techniques you might be reading of.

Generally there are two ways to get rid of a smell.

Get rid of the things causing it. In some cases basic chemistry means you leave it for months and months with a lot of ventilation and it will go away. Ozone speeds this process up, quite substantially at that. There are liquids that work on the reverse of the principle of perfume
Mask the smell with something else. Tobacco smoke however is a very potent smell for a lot of people, one that lasts a long time and can cut through a lot of things and causes something of a visceral reaction in some people. This means masking is hard and why I was going for the potent things right off the hop.

Tobacco smoke is something of a gas and will deposit things around the place, under things and can do so in reasonable volumes if given enough exposure which is why it is so annoying to deal with (even more so as it tends to form a sticky goo if there is enough there or joins things that might otherwise be there).

Ozone is a form of oxygen (O3 if you were curious). Most people describe it as a "clean" smell (the people that don't being those that are exposed to a lot of it, or that associate it with something bad). Lightning and certain types of electrical sparks (guess how you would be making it if you made your own -- http://www.bigclive.com/oz.htm ) being where most smell it.
Poisonous in high doses, not that your home efforts should get anywhere near that if you have anything close to ventilation, but reactive as anything, especially with organic materials like the products of cigarette smoke... and most plastics, hence the try to limit exposure thing. Being a gas it also gets everywhere which means you don't have to focus as hard at getting liquids everywhere and under things like liquid cleaning -- car dealers and hotels will have them for sorting things where people smoke in them for precisely this reason (and yes it is a cheap enough device they leave in the place for a couple of hours so the "cleaning fee" is more of a fine than a fee but that is besides the point). Once reacted it is also not conductive so you don't have to dry things out, which can be easier said than done for liquids.

Vinegar, depending upon the type and concentration, could work, however you risk swapping one smell for another plus is a liquid.

Worse than that this thing is reasonably delicate electronics but also fabric and rubberised plastics, and said smoke is primed to penetrate deep into all of that. Were it not then submersion into things is what I would be looking at, theoretically you could find a non conductive liquid of reasonable volatility that also acted as a solvent but price for that sort of thing is going to be way north of a new keyboard.