OT-any advice on cleaning off Sharpie?

jewels · April 18th, 2009, 01:05 PM

Sorry to bug all of you, but we had one of those, "What on earth was my child thinking," moments last night.

She and a friend found a Sharpie on the playground last night. They "decorated" the plastic or fiberglass and steel (probably baked enamel) equipment with lovely orange sharpie. Most of the drawings look like my kid's work. We got it lighter and some of it removed with a combo of 409, Mr. Clean eraser sponges and Scotchbrite sponges and 1.5 hours of scrubbing. I'm just wondering if anyone knows anything better to try, or if something like a superfine sandpaper or steel wool would be a safe way to address it. It's that plastic or fiberglass with the fine pebble to it, most of the "color" is in the indentions of the texture.

Thanks for reading my little RL interruption.

Jewels

Reaper · April 18th, 2009, 02:02 PM

you can try rubbing alcohol, not sure how it will work, but it does remove a sharpie from dry erase boards when used by mistake.

Dawg · April 18th, 2009, 03:20 PM

Ritz - the dye folks - makes an dye remover, we think. Maybe that would work. Check your supermarket.

We'll keep looking and let you know.

I am
Dawg (& Mrs. Dawg)

Dawg · April 18th, 2009, 03:37 PM

OK - a quickie search suggests brake fluid works to get sharpie off of plastic, or WD-40. Axe or one of the other body sprays, or non-acetone fingernail polish remover, too.

Toothpaste (not gel, but paste) apparently works on wood - let it sit for about 5 minutes then scrub with a toothbrush.

"Goof-off" or similar products also were noted.

See what you can do with those. (Brake fluid seemed the most popular, though).

I am
Dawg

BST · April 18th, 2009, 06:03 PM

Initially, I was thinking of rubbing alcohol too but, completely forgot about WD-40. Didn't even think about brake fluid.

The only other solvents that I can think of are turpentine and mineral spirits.

Good luck, Jewels. Let us know which works best. Even for those whose kids are grown, there's always grandchildren to consider, some day.

jewels · April 20th, 2009, 07:21 AM

WD 40 I would have never thought of. It's rained and rained here so I will try the alcohol and WD-40 ideas out as soon as there is a lull in the general wetness. Ugh.

jewels · April 20th, 2009, 09:12 PM

WD-40 did take more off. About half of the "art" was lighter after the 2 day rain (so maybe we didn't get all the oxy-clean residue off in the dark on Friday). The stuff that was still pretty readable did respond somewhat to the WD-40.

I'm just glad we got off what we were able to without resorting to something really abrasive.

THANK YOU all for your help.

Captain Chirri · May 21st, 2009, 11:27 AM

How about non-acetone nail polish remover?

That usually works pretty well, but I suggest wearing rubber gloves when you use it, as it will take off all the dead skin from your hands.

swhite228 · November 3rd, 2009, 02:41 PM

This will sound stupid, but at the high school I used to work at they used cheap hairspray to remove sharpie and other permanent marker from desks and such.

The deal was it had to be really cheap like White Rain, because those contain the most alcohol.

They used hairspray as well to seal stuff written on a chalkboard to keep it from coming off when the board was erased, and in art classes to seal pastel and charcol drawings.

For the chalkboards when they were ready to remove the saved item they just washed the board with soap and water.