Cleaning a Curling Iron Or Hair Straightener - Any Ideas

If you have ever had to curl long, heavy hair, you know that it won't stay curled very long without some hairspray added to the hair before curling. Here is a post where we show how to make great curls that will last.
 
When adding hairspray to the mix when using a curling iron or straightener, it causes some darkening of the heated area. For some reason in my head, I thought that it would be easy to clean.

Today was the day I was going to clean it. I tried every product you see in the pictures. Just for word search engines, lets just list them. Totally awesome cleaner, lime away, CLR, Coke, Oven and Bar-b-que cleaner, lemon juice, lime oil, vinegar, Mr. Clean Magic eraser, The works kitchen cleaner, olive oil, the Works toilet cleaner, Foaming Bubbles bath cleaner, Zout laundry spray, fingernail polish remover, rubbing alcohol, hair conditioner, hydrogen peroxide, and lastly, Hair Spray! 

I figured hairspray may work like when you pull tape off something and there is a residue, you take tape and put it back on and quickly remove it to get the residue off, I figured it couldn't hurt to try hairspray. No luck. 
 
The lime oil on the iron and then plugging it in for a minute and then putting a few drops of lemon juice seemed to take the most off.  Long process with not many results. 

My fingernail seemed to take the most off before using any product. Princess Five and I both searched for some time looking for anything we could find to remove the stains with no luck. 

If you find or know of anything that works, let me know so I can share the information on here. I was disappointed that I couldn't figure out something to share with you and get my iron clean. :-(