Doh! How do I fix this? (Polycrylic in hand drill crank)

[Clay Parrish]

337176

Long story short, I accidentally slopped some polycrylic down the shaft of my hand drill crank and now it is seized up pretty tight, where it won't spin freely. Can anyone suggest a fix?

[Bill Houghton]

Oops.

I assume you didn't realize this until the poly had set up. Is there anything on the can or online about how to clean up cured finish?

I'm not sure if this would work, but I'll offer it: get a strap wrench at your hardware store (plumbing section). Clamp the flat strap part of the crank down firmly; in fact, I'd plow a shallow groove or dado in some hardwood just a hair shallower than the thickness of the crank, then screw down some hardwood to clamp it firmly in place, then put that assembly in your strongest vise, or screw the assembly to something firm. Wrap the strap of the wrench around the knob (direction doesn't matter), tighten up, and apply pressure, starting out gently and working slowly up to short of crushing the wood. You might have to switch directions multiple times, until you get some movement.

On strap wrenches: there are two kinds, with hard plastic straps and stretchy rubbery straps. Each has its function. If you can afford it, I'd start with the stretchy kind, which is more gentle; but there's so much energy lost in the stretchiness that this design is often more frustrating than helpful, so you may wind up buying the hard-strap kind.

[Jim Koepke]

Bill has a good idea. I have made my own strap type wrenches using pieces of old garden hose or leather belts.

jtk

[Jim Koepke]

Another thought just popped into my mind. Can you use some dental floss around the base to remove any of the Polycrylic between the knob and the arm?

jtk

[Clay Parrish]

I think the area under the base, where the ferrule rests on the arm is pretty clean. The problem is within the bored out part of the knob, where the clearance space has been taken up with poly. I think I will either need to dissolve the poly in a solvent or remove the knob from the arm rivet and clean out the knob. Will a soak in acetone work, and if so, would the wood be ruined?

[Pat Barry]

I suppose you could always grease your hand up with vaseline right before using this from now on? :D

Otherwise, you say its seized up 'pretty tight', can you turn it at all? It might be that if you break it loose enough you can squirt some solvent in there and work it enough to free it up because its likely not cured all the way through

[Clay Parrish]

Vaseline - ha. I can turn it with moderate force, whereas before, it was quite free spinning. I am cussing myself for such a stupid move. The poly was applied two days ago, so I fear it is pretty well cured. Solvent would be my first choice, if I can determine which solvent to use. I don't mind destroying the finish. I can redo it.

[bridger berdel]

polycrylic. the name implies both polyurethane and acrylic. urethanes are pretty much untouchable with solvents short of heavy duty paint strippers, acrylic should respond pretty quickly to lacquer thinner. do a test. put a drop of the finish on a piece of glass and let it dry. then dribble your test solvent on it, wait a few minutes and wipe. when you find the right solvent get a hypodermic syringe and squirt a bit down there and start twisting.

[Curt Putnam]

Goof Off will probably do the job. If not, a stripper with MEK in it probably will but use that stuff outside and downwind of you.

[Clay Parrish]

Will I need to re-oil the wood after my little chemistry experiment?

[Jim Koepke]

Will I need to re-oil the wood after my little chemistry experiment?

It wouldn't hurt.

jtk

[Stew Denton]

Hi Clay,

I would try to dissolve the acrylic out of the gap. To do this I would use some of the stuff used in "acrylic solvent" type materials. Looking at some MSDS on line, I saw Acetone, Toluene, Methylene chloride, trichloroethylene, and MEK (methyl ethyl keytone), listed as main ingredients in the ones I looked at. There were others as well, including various acetates such as butyl acetate or amyl acetate, but the key word is "acetate" as there are a number of these.

Toluene, acetone, and MEK are often available at paint stores, hardware stores, and lumber yards. The methylene chloride, and maybe trichloroethylene are likely to be found in liquid paint removers. LIQUID PAINT REMOVERS (or paint stripper), NOT GEL BASED PAINT REMOVERS, are the ones you are interested in. I would try the liquid paint removers first. Look at the label, which should say what is in it. Look for the compounds that I listed above. The gel type will not soak down into the gap between the knob and the metal center rod, and will not work well, if at all.

What you DO NOT WANT IS WATER BASED PAINT REMOVER. This type of product should list "water" and probably "NMP" (n-methyl pyrrolidone) on the label (it might also be listed as n-methyl-2-pyrrolidone) (my spelling is non-to-good so I may have spelled this wrong.) The water based stuff will probably swell the wood, and possibly split it, and will not work well at removing the acrylic.

To use the stuff, you want it to have time to work into the gap and dissolve the acrylic. Since some of these evaporate somewhat rapidly, you will want to have them in a glass jar for the soaking. I would try a quart wide mouth GLASS jar that has a lid. If you don't have a lid, you can use aluminum foil to cover the top. (These paint removing compounds will go after a lot of plastics big time, so definitely us a GLASS jar.) A quart canning jar or mayo jar should work, but the solvents will likely soften and make sticky the poly seal in the lid.

I would put enough solvent in the jar so that the knob end of the crank will have the knob mostly under the surface, and that's all of the solvent I would put in there, and I would let it soak a day or two. Then get it out and work the knob around and around, and try to get as much of the acrylic out is possible. You can turn the knob a few times, dip it in the solvent, work it a few more time, etc. I would then put it back in the solvent to soak for another day, take it out and again work the knob to get more of the acrylic out. Each time you get more of the acrylic out, it creates more gap in the joint for the solvent to get in and work.

Don't get in a hurry, let the solvent do its job. You should dump the solvent after a wash or two and put in fresh, as the acrylic will be in solution in the solvent, and at some point the solvent will not do any good any more.

A few other thoughts, every one of the ingredients I listed will rapidly attach the plastic lens in glasses, so I would wear goggles, and besides that, believe me, all of them are very dangerous to get in your eyes. Most of them are bad very bad for you, so have good ventilation, preferably work outdoors in the shade with a little air movement. Some of them can be readily absorbed through the skin, and they will strip the oil out of your skin so fast it will make your head swim, so wear protective gloves. Besides being tough on skin, some are quite toxic, some are cancer causers, etc., so you really don't want to breath a lot of them or have them soak though your skin.

If you can't find the liquid paint remover (or thin "stripper"), you can find acetone, toluene, and possibly MEK at a paint store, lumber yard, or hardware store, and they should also work, but I would go for the paint remover first.

Once you get the stuff out of the gap between the knob and the metal rod well enough, let the knob dry thoroughly. It might take a day or two. Then you should be able to lightly sand it to get it ready to refinish. These solvents will strip some of the oils from the wood, but they don't leach it out very deeply, I don't think. I would not use an oil on the knob, because if the handle is from a very old hand egg beater drill, it may be rosewood, and if it is an oil will turn the wood darned near dead black. (Folks on this site have stated such, and I know such to be a fact......don't really want to get into how I know that to be a fact.)

At any rate, there is no absolute guarantee that the above will work, but the above are the compounds that folks sell as acrylic solvents and thinners for acrylic glues and varnishes, so they are the absolute best bets.

Interestingly enough, years ago we had a customer, a big jobber, that sold some our products, and they also made large volumes of fingernail polish remover. They accidently thought they contaminated one of the big tanks of one of our products with some of the fingernail remover, and kind of panicked. Their owner and chemist contacted our tech service folks, who in turn contacted me, and in one of the few times I have actually talked directly to a customer was called by their chemist. They sent me a sample, along with the list of the 25 different compounds they use as active ingredients in fingernail polish remover, and asked me to figure out what was in the product, along with how much contaminate was there. (They made a lot of different formulations of fingernail polish remove, they were big time in that business.) The sold it to large cosmetics companies who put it in the small bottles that they sell to stores to sell to folks who want to remove fingernail polish.

Interestingly enough, some of the same things in finger nail polish remover are also in paint remover, but the really nasty things in paint remover aren't in the finger nail polish remover. For what it's worth, finger nail polish remover contains water soluble solvents that actually remove the polish, fragrance, oils (to replace the oils from skin that the solvents strip out) artificial color, often a surfactant (soap like material), water, and sometimes an alcohol. (I may have left something out in this list, as I don't generally analyze finger nail polish remover.) At any rate I figured out what was in our product, told their chemist, and gave him some technical advise on the analysis etc. and as far as I was concerned, the problem went away. I can't remember now what the findings were, as it was probably about 20 years ago.)

Stew

[Bill Houghton]

I've used acetone on wood surfaces, with no ill effects. It's actually a fairly mild solvent, surprisingly (considering its odor); but it can cut through certain chemicals quite effectively.

Patience will be a friend, too; it may take a while to dissolve the finish or break it down mechanically. If you break it down mechanically (such as with the strap wrench), you will probably have no play whatsoever in the knob, a good thing!

[Clay Parrish]

Stew, what a very helpful response, and thanks to everyone else as well. I just so happened to have a gallon of acetone on hand so I tested it on a slip of walnut coated in polycrylic. It immediately got the poly tacky so I felt good about putting the handle in a glass jar and submerging it in acetone. Almost immediately, the poly on the knob started to break down and come off. I think in a day or so I should be good to go. I will post a after photo once I take it out and clean it up. Here is a picture of the knob in the jar, and you can already see the finish breaking down and coming off.

337206

[Stew Denton]

Hi Clay,

That's great news, & good job! One of the good things about acetone is that it is by far the least dangerous to your health of any of the solvents that you could try.

After a few soakings, after when you get the junk out, the last time you soak it in the acetone, when you remove it take a cloth or strong paper towel, splash a little acetone on the towel and clean the outside surface of the knob a few times with the acetone/towel to get the small amount of acrylic residue off the surface of the knob so that it won't mess up the finish you apply to the knob to restore if for use. Let it dry good before the finish sanding. You shouldn't need anything but a quick light sanding with a fine sandpaper, based on my experience restoring plane knobs and totes.

Stew

[Stew Denton]

Hi Clay,

One thing I just thought about is that acetone is a bit hydroscopic, which means it absorbs water from the air, so keep the jar covered with aluminum foil, the lid, or something else to keep the air that can get into the jar, to a minimum. You don't want water that the acetone absorbs to swell the wood. Because of the potential of water in the acetone you may want the knob to come to a stable state with your climate again before you refinish it. I would guess it might take a week, but others on this site would know better than I do. Ordinary solvent grade acetone sometimes has a little bit of water in it, even a new can, but the amount should generally be only a tiny amount.

Stew

[Clay Parrish]

Hi guys! I am back to report success. Thanks for all the advice and suggestions. I soaked the handle for one day in acetone and it freed the handle up. I took it out and it was free-spinning, but after everything dried up inside, it tightened back up moderately. I figured there was some residue left in there, so I soaked one more day, then pulled it out and sprayed down the center bore with an air hose. Dip and repeat x 20. I got some nasty black gunk out of the bore, and finally, it spun pretty freely, even when dry. (In the pic below, it was polished before all that black gunk came out.)

337596

I stained it again, re-poly-ed more carefully, polished the metal a little, and waxed the whole shebang.

337597

337598

Now I just need to blast, polish, and paint the frame and main gear wheel. Everything else is ready for assembly.

[Stew Denton]

Clay,

Nice job!

When you finish it please post a picture!

Stew

[Clay Parrish]

Will do. I have done two previously that I think came out well. I don't have a blast cabinet, so I am trying to muster up the motivation to blast several things in the back yard, the main wheel of the drill included - a messy proposition.

[Chuck Hart]

Acetone is the main ingredient in most nail polish removers. Just in case you glue your fingers together with superglue and need a solvent that will work.