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I did a little more looking into it, and yeah, I was all wet. Disregard my post.

Denatured alcohol is pretty much just ethanol with enough methanol, pyridine or other chemicals added to make it toxic. Home Depot should carry it. 91% isopropyl alcohol or 91% ethyl rubbing alcohol should serve roughly the same purpose.

The baking soda is there to make the crazy glue cure faster. Super glue is normally slightly acid; when you neutralize that acid with a weak base (like baking soda), it sets up more rapidly. That's the same principle that super glue accelerators like Zip Kicker use.

I've never seen one of those mini-machines that I thought was up to scratch. They're loud and underpowered, and not really any handier than a conventional canister. They trade the ease of use of a Dustbuster for not quite the power or capacity of a true canister, and IMHO, they're not really...

Essentially a more convenient version of the tool hookup used on metal Royals, then?

To the extent that anecdotes are relevant here: I recently had an in-home demo of the Avalir, and in the "salt test", where they pour salt on the carpet, have you vacuum and then go behind to see how much the Kirby gets, it didn't perform terribly well versus a Simplicity Verve. It wasn't bad...

I'm gonna be the weird contrarian here and recommend the Simplicity. As for why, it's because the manual-adjust power nozzle will do just about as well as the Kirby will, and it'll be considerably superior for bare floors and above-floor tasks. My main gripe with the Kirby's hose is that it's...

So, the other day, just after I got home from work, a Kirby salesman knocked on my door, wanting to do a demo of the new Avalir. I figured, sure, why not - I get to see the new Kirby, and I get my landing shampooed. What have I got to lose? Well, I was pretty impressed at first - it did a...

Yep, those are Filter Queen attachments, probably for the Triple Crown - they look newer than the ones that came with the late-80s, early-90s Model 95x, but they're not quite the same design as the most modern ones. So, late 90s or early 2000s. They'll work with any Filter Queen (at least, any...

Actually, the Freedom is a beast in my opinion. It digs at least as much dirt as any other vacuum I have. It's what, in my opinion, the Orecks should be. Though maybe the newer Orecks have bigger fans and more aggressive brush rolls, not sure.

I can't say I ever tried vacuuming my mattress with my Heritage II... I wonder if that'd work better than the Simplicity Freedom I usually use for that?

Right good find, those are solid workhorse uprights with really good airflow. Had to pass on a Eureka Ironsides at a yard sale a few years ago, haven't hit into anything interesting since, good to see you've got better luck!

Simplicity or Riccar are my recommendations, here, especially the new Wonder/Prima. Miele and Sebo both rank up there with them, but I think the Simplicity/Riccar vacs have a better power nozzle, better hose and an interesting range of options.

Filter Queens and Silver Kings have decent filtration, but since they have disposable filters that are replaced when you empty them, they're practically "bagged". I guess you could say semi-bagless. For pure bagless, yeah, Dyson filters pretty well, and not many others do.

I've used one of those before; my folks used to have the slightly older version. I'm not sure the exact dates, but those models ran from about 1975-1985 or so, and I think that's one of the later ones. The "4.1" is referring to 4.1 peak HP, which has... pretty much no bearing at all on the...

If you can afford it, I would vote for Simplicity/Riccar, Miele or Sebo in about that order. If that's out of the price range, then in my opinion the best power nozzle canister for the money is the Panasonic MC-CG917. The other two bagged Panasonic canisters are just about equally good. All of...

Orecks have their place - heck, I'd probably have one for quick pickups, if not for one thing. That one thing is the Riccar Supralite/Simplicity Freedom, which seems to do everything Orecks do, but better. That said, I haven't tried one on glued-down commercial carpeting. On medium-pile...

I'm generally a canister fan too. My family always had canisters when I was growing up, and I've mostly had canisters since. In fact, it's only recently that I've gotten many uprights.

Regarding the date - the AN96, IIRC, dates from the mid-80s through mid-90s, though it'd be hard to narrow down further without a serial number.

Biggest one: Rainbow uses water for filtration, Filter Queen has a paper filter. I don't find the FQ any nastier to empty than a Dyson or other bagless, but you will want a fresh filter each time. If you do that, though, they filter very well indeed. I think Filter Queens generally develop...