Mariners Mate Magic Sponge

[Nasher]

At the Solent boat jumble today we saw a stall selling a new type of cleaning sponge that doesn’t require any detergent, and is non-abrasive. The demo on really dirty fenders was very impressive.

The guy doing the selling owns a Ballistic, so I suggested he come on here and give us the details of how it works etc himself, so I’m hoping he’ll be along later.

I purchased a couple of packets of the sponges, 4 in total and tried them this afternoon. As a show special the 4 sponges were £5. I don't know the normal price.
Being me I cut one in half to see how far it went.

Pic 1 shows my really dirty and oxidised engine cover half cleaned.
As you can see the sponge has worked well especially as only plain water was used.

Pic 2 shows part of my transom cleaned.
It’s not easy from the image to see just how good the surface came up with just the sponge. The oxidised and dirty surface cleaned up like new.

Pics 3 and 4 show the end cone and part of the tube cleaned. The worked on part is on the right in both cases.
My tubes are quite dirty at the moment with a few rub marks etc. The Black rub mark on the tube came straight off, and just the sponge had the same effect as my normal cleaner which is TFR, but on its own with just plain water. However on the Hypalon the sponge soon degraded and the surface fell to pieces.

Pic 5 shows a half full bucket of water after the small amount of tube cleaning plus the used sponge against a new one.
I’m a bit concerned the sponge and water went so Yellow after just a small amount of cleaning, it was obviously removing the surface layer of the Hypalon, but again no more so than using my normal TFR and scouring (Green) sponge.

Overall I’m very impressed, especially with the effect on Gelcoat.
As far as the tubes are concerned, it may work better on newer ones in better condition that don’t require such a scrubbing action, but even so it performed as well with plain water than I’ve found with TFR and scourer. I think for my tubes I’d get through I’d get through a few sponges but am going to see how much of the boat I can clean with them purely to save me using chemicals.

Nasher.

[chewy]

Seems to do the job, does it give any indication to what is in the sponge?

[Fenlander]

We bought some of these last year for the house. Weird stuff but it did work well. Didn't take much cleaning to wear out the sponge though... and it did tend to overclean around spot marks you removed leaving obvious light marks.... its actually quite aggressive.

Here is a promo for the stuff we had...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuHcLvdWqJM

David

[Tony]

i have used these...really good but do fall apart when doing tubes though..Overall very good.

[codprawn]

They are the same as the JML magic sponges. Can be boat pretty cheap on Ebay. You can get 10 for about £5.

They do work well - even on tubes BUT they are more agrressive than you think so be very carefull. They actually work like sandpaper - I tried some on the centre console of my Discovery and they raised the grain a bit and I was pretty gentle with them.

It does say in the instructions not to use on delicate suraces or paintwork.

Properly knows as Basotect or Melamine foam

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melamine_foam.

[jyasaki]

Sounds like what they call "Mr. Clean Magic Erasers" on this side of the pond.

Websearch should get you more info.

jky

[Nasher]

Appears these guys are using this thread as a way of promoting their product.

Think I'll call them and suggest they take out a trade membership

Having tried the sponge a few times now on various areas of the boat, it works OK on the gelcoat etc but only really only takes off the worst of the grime on the tubes.

Nasher.