Plexiglass Rub-Mark and Scratch Repair?

[tgtaylor]

Sometimes it's more fuss to polish than to simply replace. But yeah, just go to some place like Tap Plastics and pick up the proper polish. They'll know what you need, and have it in stock.

Good ole Tap Plastics! They were a good customer back in the day and when I got into printing my own photographs, I bought all my OP-3 acrylic for mounting from them. In November I decided to replace the ground glass protector on the 810G and brought to them the dark acrylic protector for the MII that the MAC group sold me for $35.00 years ago. They made a duplicate for me while I was there for just $17 and change. https://www.tapplastics.com/product/...storal_kit/629

Tap's "Brillianize" plastic cleaner ($5.85 for an 8oz spray bottle) works like a charm - makes the OP-3 look better than new if that is possible. But I didn't see it on their website.

[Drew Wiley]

Pretty hard to polish things out without appropriate polishing equipment more expensive than a stack of 0P3. But yes, experiment on scraps first, to see what you can or can't get away with in terms of minor scratches. Any kind of hard acrylic sheet if fine for that purpose. I've got plenty of the real deal kinds of abrasives and gear, and hesitate to do it; big headache.

I once had a customer who made his living polishing out scratches on tempered glass commercial store doors. Well, at a replacement cost of anywhere between $18,000 to $40,000 for those kinds of automated doors (it's not like replacing auto glass), charging four or five thousand bucks to polish out something with a sixty dollar apiece diamond pad is a bargain. With Plexi, silicon carbide or "Granat" discs, along with some salad oil lube is just fine, but is more involved technique-wise than one might think. Just a couple of mm of incorrect random rotation, and you've got a new set of scratches. Talk to the automotive polishing experts first. Of course, you could just pick up a little bottle of liquified pumice and rottenstone at the plastics shop, and a mountain of microfiber cloths, and spend your weekends doing it the show way.

Brillianize won't do a damn thing for deep scratches. But I do recommend keeping it around for very minor issues.

[Jim C.]

...I'm also wondering if clear acrylic nail polish would work to fill the scratches? Thinking that I'll find my smallest piece of acrylic and do a bit of experimenting!

A number of these sheets have such minor damage as to be basically not noticeable - but I would still not feel right selling prints covered by these sheets.

As for simply replacing my "damaged" acrylic sheets, a few of these are quite large - up to 36x48-ish...and being UV-protective OP-3, they are a bit pricy. I have even larger ones, but so far those are fine.

Depending on the quality of the plexi if you use anything that has solvent in it like nail polish ( acetone, toluene, xlyol ) it's going to make it worse.
Is the UV protective plexi integral to the acrylic ( formulated in the material ) or a coating ? If it's a coating polishing will remove it.

I thought these were personal hanging framed prints, but if the sheets are stock for your selling framed prints, why is there not the factory protective paper on them ?

Make smaller prints to salvage the larger sheets.

[tgtaylor]

Unlike the product I linked to in the post above, Brillianize is only advertised as a cleaner and using it with a microfiber cloth makes the acrylic shine. All of my acrylic is OP3 AR1 meaning that it is abrasion resistant on 1 side and you mount it with that side facing outward. I had 1 print mounted in a 17x14 Nielsen frame fall from its position on the wall to the floor hitting a cart on the way down but happily no scratches resulted which means that I had the correct side facing outward.

[John Layton]

Jim C. - these are prints which have already been out and about to shows, etc. - which have not yet sold...therefore the protective film has long since been removed.

And TG...I've been very curious about the "scratch resistant" plexiglass - thinking that I should probably just go ahead and replace everything with this...especially now as my remaining framed print inventory is a bit low.

Then again, my printing/framing/selling activity has fallen off lately as I've been focussing on other aspects of life - and I'm not yet sure when, or even if, I'll ramp up the "commerce" end of my photography once again. To be honest, I've been pretty happy being much less aggressive about selling prints...and am thinking that I might focus more deeply on another passion, and look for yet another 944 to restore.

[Drew Wiley]

Semi-hard coated acrylic, which also happens to be a true optical coating inhibiting reflections too, is available, but VERY expensive, and made in an odd sized sheet. It makes OP3 seem as cheap as paper towels by comparison. Museum stuff. It cannot be polished out. You also need to be careful what kinds of cleaners you use on it.

[pgk]

I've succesfully polished scratches out of underwater dome ports (plexiglass/acrylic) using brass and silver polishes; Brasso and Goddard's silver polish which is based on Jeweller's rouge I believe (UK). Both work fine, but as with any polishing it takes a lot of time and patience. In essence any very fine polishing compound should work on soft transparent plastic surfaces, provided that they contain no chemically active solvents which can attack the material they are being used on.

[Joe O'Hara]

Very light, but annoying scratches (not broad rub marks) will sometimes become practically invisible by simply reversing the acrylic in the frame, i.e., putting the outside on the inside. Sounds crazy but it sometimes works, so it's worth a try on marginal cases at least.