Acrylic Scratch Removal Tips

[Stashu-Dave]

I'm looking for some tips/ideas on how to get scratches out of large acrylic tanks(360gal x 2 and 250 x 2). Some scratches are really deep and there are some in almost every square inch of the tank. I'm going to have to empty the tanks and probably do all of the inside surfaces. I've already got the Rainbow Lifegard scratch removal kit but it looks like that little kit will take me forever with the 4 large tanks I have to redo. Any ideas other than buying new tanks would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
Dave

 

[FishHead1]

I tried getting a few minor scratches out with the Rainbow kit. It make the area appear slightly cloudy. I tried for hours to get it back to clear without any luck.

 

[Mustang]

With really deep scratches you are going to need
larger grit than comes with the rainbow kit

I purchased a kit from www.usplastics.com
the kit was small but came with 150 grit and 600 and some polishes it was like $5

yes 150 is rough but it cuts down fast ( you always want to sand in one direction and then when you switch grit you sand in the other to see that you got the scratches out)

I did this on the front of my tank after dripping super glue on it and unless you know it was there
you can't tell
I then used the Novus 1,2,3 to polish it out

It was a lot of work and my scratch was only 2" long BTW for my 2? scratch I sanded an area about 6? square and took about 3 hours you need to sand a lager area so you do not have a ?Low? spot you need to fade in the scratch so it looks good
I would suggest you find out if you could use a power buffer to buff it after you sand that would cut way down on the time

I would also check in your area to see if there is a pro that might be able to do it just to see how much they might charge

Hope I didn't ramble to much I just went thought this recently and learned a lot from it

[ October 24, 2001: Message edited by: Mustang ]</p>
_________________
bank bailout

 

[Stashu-Dave]

Thanks for the responses guys. I knew this was going to be a project. luckily most of the scratches aren't that deep they're just the minor scratches you seem to accumulate over a long time with acrylic. Thanks Again.
Dave

 

[Anonymous]

hey dave,
i'm new to reef keeping but this is something i have experienced myself. I ordered a kit from Knight Industries. The kit cost under $20 and came with 6 grits ranging from 1800 to 8000. The kit also includes an underwater safe sanding block and a cotton flannel cloth and 1oz. bottle of anti static cream for the outside finishing touch.

I resurfaced the entire inside of my 75gal tank in about 12 hours. Talk about some sore shoulders and wrists

. But it worked. Scratches ranging from pretty deep live rock gouges to spiderwebs from shoddy algea scrapers all came out.

smcnulty: i experienced the cloudy effect too and for this reason i would advise dave to order an extra couple of sheets in the finest grits.

HTH,
po

 

[fish_who?]

I have done the same thing with my first 65 gallon tank and now I just did it a month ago on my 125 gallon tank. It takes a long long time to do it, but I have to admit the result is awesome. What I did is go to the local auto parts store or a auto paint supply store and pick up some of the sand paper. They seem to have a few grits that are in the kit. I used a jitterbug sander (be very careful), with the first 2 or 3 sheets of paper, then all by hand after. For my 125 it took about 9 hours. I only did the inside. Also you have to look at the acrylic at an angle to see if you got rid of the scratches from the previous grit.