The Unclear Impact

My MX Master 3 mouse’s rubber shell was peeling off, which caused a funny feeling when handled & little pieces of rubber going everywhere. Not wanting to just throw away the mouse, I decided to clean it up by removing some of the offending rubber. This is not a coating, so it cannot be removed entirely. The whole shell is one piece of rubber, which separated into layers due to body heat and sweat. I hope this is just a design mistake, and Logitech deliberately select such material that is being touched for the better part of every workday.

1. You don’t need to remove the shell of the mouse, because it is reasonable watertight. But avoid getting any liquids inside through the button holes. (The shell can be removed with a torx screwdriver and some insistence.)
2. I couldn’t find any pure alcohol at home, so I used a cleaning solution that is mostly denatured alcohol (ethanol with isopropyl, I guess) and some glycerin. I don’t know how much the glycerin helped or hurt.
3. To stop the outer layer from peeling, soak a q-tip in the alcohol and move it outside the peeling bit to thin the top layer out. Once it’s thin enough, it will stick to the bottom layer instead of peeling up. Using the q-tip inside on the border of the damaged area will cause the top layer to peel even more, which could be useful to remove ugly parts of it.
4. For especially stubborn overhangs, a dry q-tip can help abrading them away, but will damage the underlying rubber.
5. Soak a cotton ball in alcohol and rub it vigorously over the (now thinned) edge to ‘fuse’ it to the underlying layer. Looks like this is part mechanical (the rubbing thins the upper layer even more) and part chemical (the alcohol acts as a solvent for the rubber and the layers can stick together). This step is a bit hard on the fingertips, so a glove (that is resistant to the alcohol) could be useful.
6. Clean the site with a cotton ball soaked in water to wash away the alcohol residue, then dry everything with a cloth.
7. Just like I usually clean it, I cleaned the mouse with a damp microfibre cloth in the end.

Sorry, no before / during pics. I was improvising throughout, so there’s probably a better way to do this with less damage to the shell.

I guess the exposed lower layer will eventually start peeling again, but the process could be repeated a few times until the shell becomes too thin. This should make the mouse more pleasant to use throughout its lifetime.