Anyone ever successfully remove a scratch from acrylic?

[Anonymous]

Anyone ever successfully remove a scratch from acrylic?

I'm moving my 100 gal acrylic tank, and the front is full of scratches. I'm being a woos (sp?) about polishing them out, fearing I will make things far worse and destroy the thing completely.

Anyone ever get this to work? Any hints?

 

[Anonymous]

I believe lots of people have. SnowManSnow (his tank was 'attacked by a 5yo'), SFSU, and others.

The correct spelling is wuss.

 

[Anonymous]

Anyone ever successfully remove a scratch from acrylic?

I'm moving my 100 gal acrylic tank, and the front is full of scratches. I'm being a woos (sp?) about polishing them out, fearing I will make things far worse and destroy the thing completely.

Anyone ever get this to work? Any hints?

I have a micro-mesh kit around some place. It's super easy and brainless to use. I'll look around for it and if I find it, I'll pass it onto you. I could ship it, or we could meet up near campus. Better yet a friend of mine works up there in financial aid and she could bring it up to her office.

 

[Anonymous]

As Gresham stated super easy to use a micromesh kit, maybe start with a smaller grit if the scratch is really large. Basically work down your grits going perpendicular with each step down, it'll end up looking WAY worse as you're doing it because you'll basically haze the hell out of the acrylic, and each successive grit size will make the haze larger but that's when you know it's working .. as long as you don't run out of finer grits you'll make it as clear as can be.

The basics is you dont want to see the scratches from the past before (including the initial scratch)

 

[Anonymous]

Anyone ever successfully remove a scratch from acrylic?

I'm moving my 100 gal acrylic tank, and the front is full of scratches. I'm being a woos (sp?) about polishing them out, fearing I will make things far worse and destroy the thing completely.

Anyone ever get this to work? Any hints?

I have a micro-mesh kit around some place. It's super easy and brainless to use. I'll look around for it and if I find it, I'll pass it onto you. I could ship it, or we could meet up near campus. Better yet a friend of mine works up there in financial aid and she could bring it up to her office.

Wanna come up to my office and do it for me? I'll buy you dinner or some meth or something?

 

[Anonymous]

Bill, once you see how it's done you might be a bit surprised at how easy it is.

It will take quite a bit of elbow grease and time to do the entire front of a 100g, but it's not exactly a technical skill. Try it out on a piece of scrap acrylic if you have one.

 

[Anonymous]

Or go over to the academy of sciences, I've noticed a few fine scratches on their big tank, I'm sure they won't mind if you practice on that, I mean the acrylic is thick enough they can fix any mistake you make

 

[Anonymous]

Anyone ever successfully remove a scratch from acrylic?

I'm moving my 100 gal acrylic tank, and the front is full of scratches. I'm being a woos (sp?) about polishing them out, fearing I will make things far worse and destroy the thing completely.

Anyone ever get this to work? Any hints?

I have a micro-mesh kit around some place. It's super easy and brainless to use. I'll look around for it and if I find it, I'll pass it onto you. I could ship it, or we could meet up near campus. Better yet a friend of mine works up there in financial aid and she could bring it up to her office.

Wanna come up to my office and do it for me? I'll buy you dinner or some meth or something?

You had me at Meth :lol:

My schedule is a bit full right now but I could in a couple weeks I suppose. IT takes a lot of time so I'd just show you and you'd have to do the main work. I have detailed instructions. The kit is from a friend that was doing them as a start up company that due to other things never took off.

 

[Anonymous]

Don't worry. I picked one up in Campbell today. I want to fill the tank sometime this weekend before anyone comes back, since this will involve stringing 100 ft of hose into my office. :lol:

 

[Anonymous]

Don't worry. I picked one up in Campbell today. I want to fill the tank sometime this weekend before anyone comes back, since this will involve stringing 100 ft of hose into my office. :lol:

A micromesh kit or just a consumer kit from Dolphin Pet Village? MM is the best option. The kits sold at stores take too much acrylic off IMO/IME and create small lens effects.

 

[Anonymous]

I bought this, well above list price.

I'm finding I need to take the first reviewer's advice and get some courser mesh to start with...

http://www.marinedepot.com/ps_viewitem. ... ent=RB1551

 

[Anonymous]

The nice thing about MicroMesh is you can use it with the tank running. The kit you got has to have the water removed and takes longer

Get most of them out now and do touch up with the MM kit I have.

 

[Anonymous]

Well, I can believe it takes longer. I feel like the only thing I have accomplished is destroying my morale and tank. It can be used under water, btw, at least according to the instructions.

Can you post the one you have?

 

[Anonymous]

Well, I can believe it takes longer. I feel like the only thing I have accomplished is destroying my morale and tank. It can be used under water, btw, at least according to the instructions.

Can you post the one you have?

The one I have is a kit from a now defunct start-up company so it never made it to a retail package enviroment. it's multiple sheets of various sizes of MM with a velcro attachment for the MM and a magnet. You use it like any other magnet cleaner except you do much longer strokes. You want to do like 6" to 12" on all sides of the scratch as so you don't create any lens effect.

Sorry, I should have stated that the liquid it comes with really isn't aquarium safe although they could have changed that on me in recent years.

 

[Anonymous]

My guess is the only difference is the lack of magnet. It gives you a squishy sanding block.

I got rid of one series of nasty scratches, and then went to work on the deepest one, and after I got to about the 1200 mesh, I could see I hadn't got rid of the whole scratch, so I have to do it some more.

Leaving the magnets where the kids could get sand in them and play with them was a HUGE mistake.

 

[Anonymous]

Bill, once you see how it's done you might be a bit surprised at how easy it is.

It will take quite a bit of elbow grease and time to do the entire front of a 100g, but it's not exactly a technical skill. Try it out on a piece of scrap acrylic if you have one.

I need a new aquarium.

 

[Anonymous]

Bill, once you see how it's done you might be a bit surprised at how easy it is.

It will take quite a bit of elbow grease and time to do the entire front of a 100g, but it's not exactly a technical skill. Try it out on a piece of scrap acrylic if you have one.

I need a new aquarium.

What grit did you start with? I sanded up an absolutely demolished tank recently, I had to start with 100, then 200, then 440, 600, 800, 1500, all the way up to 4500 or whatever the micromesh is. Don't give up!

Is this the tank we got when we were in Hayward together? I'd like to extend that offer again but I don't have an account there anymore.

 

[Anonymous]

Bill, once you see how it's done you might be a bit surprised at how easy it is.

It will take quite a bit of elbow grease and time to do the entire front of a 100g, but it's not exactly a technical skill. Try it out on a piece of scrap acrylic if you have one.

I need a new aquarium.

What grit did you start with? I sanded up an absolutely demolished tank recently, I had to start with 100, then 200, then 440, 600, 800, 1500, all the way up to 4500 or whatever the micromesh is. Don't give up!

Is this the tank we got when we were in Hayward together? I'd like to extend that offer again but I don't have an account there anymore.

Yes, it is, I am ashamed to say. The kids got gravel caught under the algae magnet. I've got three large patches sanded, starting with 200 (I had to buy it at the hardware store) and now I am about half way done. I've just run out of time and was getting demoralized. I'll give it another try.

The sick thing is it didn't really look all that bad before I started it.

 

[Anonymous]

Well I had a gouge in my tank around 10 inches long that was caused when the tank was pulled out of storage I think and something caught on it, and it was a deep gouge, the acrylic curled up along the length of it and you could fit a finger nail into it. As I sanded through it I damn near had 2/3rds of the pane of acrylic "hazed up" but when it was all said and done, no more gouge.

 

[jamesw]

Maybe my input is too late, but for future - I've used the Novus polishing kit (pastes) with great success on scratched acrylic.

Cheers
James