Damaging records with a hand turned machine.

no, pressing hard with a proper record cleaning brush such at the discwasher or the musicdirect brush should do no damage as long as there is fluid applied

Xiekitchen, I am not sure I agree with you. I beleive the cleaning fluids do most of the cleaning, aided by the brush. I don't think alot of pressure is neccesary. Just enough for the brush to reach as close as possible to the bottom of the grooves. I would think too much pressure could make small (probably inaudible)marks on the vinyl surface. It probably depends on the type of brush used.

Yes you can.
If the dry side of the record is facing a dry pad and you are simultaneously dragging the vinyl with a downward pressure across a dry pad, then any dirt on the surfaceof the vinyl will be scraping across the vinyl. Just be careful to never drag vinyl dry over any dry surface: no matter how soft except the dry micro carbon brushes like the Hunt E.D.A or Audioquest. After using the manual Nitty Gritty record vacuum a while, I realized it is best to keep the record stationary and rotate the wet applicator with a strong downward pressure back and forth while the vacuum brush is providing support.

I've found that vinyl lps are more resilient than I originally thought they were, but agree that you don't want to scrub them with a dry pad, and don't need to scrub extra hard. I have the manual nitty gritty RCM, and I have an old junk turntable next to it which I use to wet the first side of the LP. That is, I wet side one on the TT, flip it over and place it in the RCM, wet side 2 which is the up side on the RCM, scrub both sides, and then vacuum them. I do one wash cycle with cleaning fluid, rinse with pure distilled water.

I don't press really hard during scrubbing, but I'm not gentle either.

A "technical" person at Musicdirect advised me to scrub as hard as I like with their brushes, it would not hurt the vinyl???