I bought these old vintage Talen's sticks
on ebay.
I have no idea of their age, but they've
been jostling
around together for quite some time.
Into the bath of rice flour they go. A
tupperware
container of rice flour can be kept indefinitely for the purpose of
cleaning your sticks. I take the opportunity to clean out the box while
the sticks are enjoying their bath. Put them in the rice flour, secure
the lid and then shake it like a maraca.
Clean and shiny. Several of them still
sport the rather
hard shell that some pastels develop, notably Talen's current brand,
Rembrants'. These coatings must either be rubbed off on scrap paper or
in some instances scraped off with a knife.
