How can I remove traces of old sail numbers?

Poignard

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I peeled off some self-adhesive sail numbers and this has left a residue of glue and blue dye where the numbers were?

How can I remove this?
 
With great difficulty. Don't know about Mykal Sticky stuff remover worth a try, however acetone will dissolve the glue but needs lots of acetone to get the dissolved glue off. ie lots of clean rags each with a new lot of acetone. You might try scraping the dissolved glue off with a knife edge. good luck ol'will
 
Try some rubbing alcohol, also known as Isopropyl Alcohol or Isopropanol. Cheap as chips too
 
Thinners No 3 did it for me, but it's pretty toxic stuff so outdoors with some respiratory protection. It takes a lot of solvent to remove a full set of numbers.
Just wondering why you want to remove old sail numbers? Fell off the back of a truck eh?
Perhaps bought a boat in Ireland and don't want to display a number which is now wrong?
 
Our sailmaker gave us a citrus based spray for removing the old sail numbers. Did work but a slow process, which I found best done on the outside patio table.
Key priority for us (and the sailmaker) was avoiding damaging an expensive North cruising laminate sail, so didn’t want to use anything not specifically approved for use on these sails by the sailmaker.
 
Just wondering why you want to remove old sail numbers? Fell off the back of a truck eh?

Buy a new sail!


I haven't stolen the sail and I can easily afford to buy a new sail.

The alteration is simply an experiment; a little project for the winter.

I want to try using a mainsail sail without battens, but because battens are necessary to support the roach, I have cut off the roach from an old mainsail.

The cut line goes through one of the sail numbers so all the numbers have had to come off.

This left a residue of adhesive and blue dye on the altered sail.

That is the reason for this thread.

If the altered sail does what I want it to do, ie enable me to lower and raise it with the wind aft, then I will order a new sail with no roach.

The new sail will be made 300mm longer in the foot than the one I altered, which will go some way towards making up the area lost by having no roach.
 
Take care with some of these 'fluids' ... you may damage the 'fillers' in the weave .... or even the material itself.
Wise words

I would definitely avoid using acetone (and MEK) on polyester sailcloth. Alcohols such as ethanol and isopropanol should be OK.

I know nothing about the effects on the fillers though.
 
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