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Once a customer has repeatedly used polish which contains Silicone in it how do I completely remove it? If you think it is unnecessary maybe I just want to! That goes for using a product for minor scratch removal meant for cars that may have Silicone in it. There must be a safe way to remove the Silicone without it being a major undertaking. I seriously doubt this guitar I am working on will ever need to be refinished or drop-filled but it is nice to know how to do things correctly. Thank You knowledgeable one's!

You can't, that I know of. That's why silicone is such a bad actor in bonding and finishing shops.

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

about the best you can do is wipe down thoroughly with naptha and hope the silicone has not got onto bare wood anywhere. once it gets on something complete removal is, as jim said, just about impossible.

Be very careful about contaminating your shop with the silicone from this instrument, such as workbench pads, neck cradles, etc. It could come back and haunt you when you do finish work.

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now known around here as Pat Foster
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

I would use a very high quality wax and grease remover that is marketed to the automotive refinishing trade. All the major paint manufacturers have their own label. Don't use cheap stuff from the local hardware store, it's just not the same thing.

Test the finish first to be sure it doesn't effect it before getting too into it. The trick is to use lots of rags, and throw them in the rubbish when your done, just so you don't contaminate anything else. Wet the surface to be cleaned with the wax and grease remover, then wipe dry with a clean rag. Do the whole instrument, then discard the rags and start again with clean ones. If the instrument is seriously contaminated I would do this 4 or 5 times.

There are different grades of silicon that are used in wax and polishes. The worst thing that we come across refinishing cars is Armourall. It's a nightmare to get rid of. It's come to the point that if a car comes into be repaired that has Armourall on it, we tell the customer to please take it elsewhere. To many times we've had to redo a complete weeks worth of work because of contamination.

Other products that are regularly used in glossing up a finish have high quality silicon in them and it's really not a big deal to remove it. One that comes to mind is the Pink hand glaze made by 3M. The Grey one doesn't have any silicon. 

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Allen R. McFarlen
Barron River Guitars & Ukuleles
Facebook
Cairns, Australia

I always thought it required surgery to remove silicone! 

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Solvent-wise, the best thing to remove silicone is normal hexane.  Unfortunately, most hardware stores don't offer hexane, and I wouldn't recommend using gasoline (which is mostly hexane) because of all the other additives in it.

It's possible that the best solution is a combination of solvent and the mechanical abrasion suggested above.  I'd probably start with VM&P naphtha, then go to mineral spirits, and then the wax-removing polish.  The idea is to get the silicone to go into the rag or polishing pad, so plan to go through several.

-Ben

Impossible? I dunno. Probably 2000? F. heat for an hour would do it.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

HERE is an interesting little blurb on removal from aerospace tools.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars