how to remove sharpie from clear

[jeffdeoranut]

anyone know of a way to remove blue sharpie from clear parts w/o damage other than sanding and polishing?  just got a clearbodied kit and about 1/3 of body is colored with blue sharpie...tia

[935k3]

Alcohol or Ammonia

[Action Jackson]

Try rubbing alcohol that might work.

[BigTallDad]

Have you considered using chlorine bleach?

[Ace-Garageguy]

70% or 90% isopropyl alcohol, available at any drugstore, will often take Sharpie off of plastic...but it depends.

How hard the surface is is the key. The harder the surface, the less the ink will penetrate.

Clear plastic styrene model parts typically have a harder surface than the rest of the kit parts, especially these days.

Sharpie penetrates into soft sheet styrene, usually, too deeply to pull it all out with alcohol.

Clear kit parts, not so much. And alcohol won't damage the surface.

There IS the chance you'll scratch it though, even if it does come off.

In that case, just polish the gloss back up as if you were doing paint.

(Buying iso alcohol is a good investment too. 70% makes one of the best pre-painting cleaners you can get, and the 90% stuff will strip many lacquer paints. Both last forever in tightly capped bottles.)

Edited August 3, 2018 by Ace-Garageguy

[Snake45]

  On 8/3/2018 at 4:44 PM, Ace-Garageguy said:

70% or 90% isopropyl alcohol, available at any drugstore, will often take Sharpie off of plastic...but it depends.

How hard the surface is is the key. The harder the surface, the less the ink will penetrate.

Clear plastic styrene model parts typically have a harder surface than the rest of the kit parts, especially these days.

Sharpie penetrates into soft sheet styrene, usually, too deeply to pull it all out with alcohol.

Clear kit parts, not so much. And alcohol won't damage the surface.

There IS the chance you'll scratch it though, even if it does come off.

In that case, just polish the gloss back up as if you were doing paint.

(Buying iso alcohol is a good investment too. 70% makes one of the best pre-painting cleaners you can get, and the 90% stuff will strip many lacquer paints. Both last forever in tightly capped bottles.)

Expand  

What he said. I'd be willing to lay a cash bet that one of the alcohols takes it right off. 

BTW, I often use alcohol to clean up Silver Sharpie "overruns" off enamel paint, no problem at all. Just another day in the Snakepit. 

[Rat Roaster]

WD-40 dissolves permanent marker if it is fairly recent but i dunno if it does bad things to styrene

[bismarck]

Hand sanitizer. We use it all the time where I work to do just that.

[peteski]

Alcohol is a good solvent for Sharpies. Hand sanitizer is guess what? Alcohol-based.

I often use 99% IPA (Ispropanol, a.k.a. isopropyl Alcohol) in gallon cans from my local hardware store. I find it in the paint thinners section.

But like Bill said, it is possible that the dye penetrated into plastic and it will be impossible to fully remove it.  The other thing that has me worried is that the solvent used in Sharpies might slightly craze polystyrene. If that happened then the only way to fix it would be to sand and polish the piece.

[Jim N]

I use ELO (Easy Lift Off) by Pactra.  Works really well.  I brush it on with an artist paint brush and you can be quite "surgical" removing the ink.

[Deathgoblin]

I second the alcohol.  It works quickly.