The Magic of Sugar Cubes

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Hello everyone. Just thought I'd post some pictures of my results using sugar cubes to remove text from some panels.

I recall hearing this here, but I forgot about it, that sugar cubes were just abrasive enough to remove silkscreen but not abrasive enough to scratch the paint of a metal or other panel.

So I was reminded when I posted This thread (how to remove text from HP panels), of a few alternatives including the sugar cube technique. I may try some of the others but here is what happened with the cubes.

--pic-- before. I'm going to try to remove the lettering from the top one.
 

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Observations

I used about 20-30 cubes, this took about 3-4 hours total. Most of it was done in a 1 night marathon session.

The writing comes off slowly and the sugar cubes will not scratch the paint. Obviously the surface should be dry or those cubes will just disintegrate on you

They will, however, scrape off the paint as you see a couple of patches where the paint came completely off and I am down to bare metal.

This just kind of happened without warning so be careful and watch for it. I guess the paint may be thinner in some sections. Also, the sharp edges of the cube will really be much more abrasive than using a flat side.

Also, you see that it is no problem for the cubes to remove the black marker, scratches and scrapes. The text and background silk screening were the toughest things to remove. And there is still barely visible a faded section of silk screen that I don't want to mess with for fear of going down to the metal again.

I really wanted to keep the original color and look of the HP product for this (preamp) so now I have to figure out how to blend in some paint into the patches. Advice on this? paint thinner?


Anyway, there you have it, sugar cubes worked well but you gotta be careful about going too far. Thanks to everyone for their advice on this.
 
Hey Igreen,

I am not sure if this product will do what the sugar cubes do but it works on the same principles. All my friends with kids swear by it! Check it out: http://www.mrclean.com/sites/en_US/mrclean/products/eraser.shtml

As far as touching up paint, do you have any friends in the Auto Body Work field. I think they could give you some good tips. Automotive "Rubbing" and "Polishing Compound" might help with small scratches and stains in the paint surface and smoothing out anything you paint to fill chips, it also helps it look closer to new paint.
Good luck!

Regards//Keith
 
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