Hi I’ve just about finished the HWS I’ve been working on. I masked off the deck and bottom skins to protect them while I built out and shaped the rails. It was in situ for about 2-3 weeks.
When I removed the tape (expensive type) it left a lot of residue, espesially where I scuft the tape in sanding. I managed to remove most of it with another peice of tape, but along the inside edge it seems that the residue has mixed with fine sanding dust and I’ve not been able to remove it with more tape.
I’ve searched,but not found anything specific to a HWS. I think I’ll need to use some sort of solvent. One that (a) wont stain the bare wood and (b) wont hang around to contaminate the epoxy when glassing.
My instinct tells me to try denatured alcohol or some kind of alcohol base wood cleaner? Any help would be appriciated.
I have had the same problems and just sanded the tape of, used a razor blade/stanely knife to scrape it off and have used actone to rub it off (not on wood) not sure if this would stain the wood.
I also experienced this while glassing the insides of my top/bottom skins, the tape holding the strips together on the face side stuck to the timber after epoxy had cured, partly because the epoxy had seeped through the joins and then stuck to the underside of the tape, I peeled very slowly, then just hand sanded any remainder off with a block and paper, it was very time consuming because it was EVERYWHERE not just around the edges like yours and mine had epoxy on it too!
I think if you just take a block and paper and go steady you will get rid of it all, hope that helps, let us know how it goes…
this pic shows a section of the tape stuck on with wayward epoxy, tip: don’t use blue either! stands out like dogs balls!
Kiricore – Yes good quality, heat resistant, low tack masking tape. I think the tack was left because it was on the board for such a long lime. I’ve used acetone on poly boards after glassing with good results, but this is going to be glassed using epoxy and I’ve read that mixing these is not a good idea, also I think that that may stain the wood.
Robbo – I did try water and household washing up liquid, and then fine sand paper, and a small area, again with a good result but still left the slight line and some discolouration of the wood, this does seem to disappear when wet so am hopeful that it wont show when the board is given a sealer coat of epoxy.
I think this method works the residue into the grain some, as the skins are decorative veneered ply I haven’t got a great deal of room for sanding. I’ll do some more tests and report back.
Hey there, yeah definately dont use acetone if you are going to glass with epoxy, you may run into curing problems. Use denatured alcohol, it doesnt stain the wood, and will help in the removal process. I have run into several issues on some of my wood boards…how thick is the wood that the tape is stuck to? You dont want to sand too much. But between a small block plane, fine sandpaper, denatured alcohol some tunes and a beer it should come off in some time. Hope this has helped.
Done a few more tests and so far the best and quickest way has been to use a soft pencil eraser, seems to lift up the residue, its even been getting it out of the grain too, no chemicals or staining to worry about, I’ll try it on a small patch of the board latter once I’ve tested a few other ideas out but I think I’ve found the winner.
