2022 Vinyl Record Restoration Project

I've mentioned a few times on this site that I had a nice collection of vinyl albums that got messed up by Katrina.

They spent a few weeks under water and another few weeks laying around before we were allowed to get back into the house. I has just written them off as lost even though I still had them in my possession.

They've been in storage for more than 15 years. When we first got them back I went through them removed the jackets and sleeves which had been totally destroyed.

We bought a bunch of clear plastic sleeves to put them in and kind of left it at that.

This year we decided to try to restore as many as possible.

They are in various degrees of distress. Some appear to be in decent shape. Some seem like they may be unrecoverable.

Some are dirty, some are warped, some are both dirty and warped.

As a test I took one of the warped records laid it on a flat surface and put about 10lbs of flat weight on top. 2 weeks later, it's still warped.

So, i have a few questions.

1: what's the best way to try to clean them?

2: Is is possible to straighten the warped records?



A few random pics to show what I'm dealing with.

Tub with 120 albums. Apparently some didn't make the trip since I had over 200.