I cleaned paint off of a Mardi Gras wrap with no damage using; Motsenbockers 'Lift Off 4' spray Graffiti Remover. Safe, effective, won't harm the wrap.

John

When I first started restoring drums I once used lacquer thinner to clean up some white marine pearl concert toms. The lac thinner did not harm the wrap. I dont mean soaking them in it, just using a rag with lac thinner on it. I think the old wraps are much more durable than we think. But as always, please try this like on the bottom of the bass drum in a small area. I use lac thinner almost every day and it is very strong stuff but it dosent seem to hurt the drum wraps. Good luck to you, please post some pics of the projects.

JC

I stripped my bass drum hoops with the Motsenbockers Lift Off 4. They had layers of black paint and 1 hoop had a partial inlay of light blue pearl wrap. I should of removed the painted inlay and done it seperate. As the Lift Off got under the wrap inlay and melted it. It loosened the paint on the wrap much faster than the numerous layers on the wood hoops. Rookie mistake on my part. If I had stripped the wrap inlay by itself it would have been fine. Just be aware the amount of time it sit's on the shell I guess?

Well I finially got time to try removing some of the paint. Whoever painted it before put the hardware back on without letting the paint dry, so it took a little work getting all that off.

I decided to go the route of laquer thinner. I just lightly wet the rag and rubbed. In thin areas it came up nicely with very little work. In some of the thicker areas I tried, I could feel it soften the paint up and I scraped it with my finger nail and then used the rag to clean up. It didnt seem to effect the wrap t all. I'll attach a few pics of the test areas. I look forward togetting this all done.

Glenn - Ouch! Never tried it on hoops before! I'll learn from -your- mistake and make sure I never do in the future. Sorry to hear the strip was ruined. And yes, the stripper works fast. I leave it on for 5/10 minutes and wipe away the goop. Good stuff.

John

Here's a few pics.

The paint hasn`t bonded to the lanolium, but instead of useing your finger nail, put a edge on a credit card by rubbing it on sandpaper, not to sharp an edge though, it will conform to the curve and you wont need to scratch.

Thanks Oddball. That's a perfect idea. I'll give it a try later on. I just love that gold sparkle underneath. The cool thing is that it almost perfectly matches my champagne sparkle Slingerland kit.

That`s definately not oil paint, after many years oil still doesn`t dry completely and the nail/credit card thing wouldn`t work. But you can rub residual paint off with thinner, you could do all the rub-off technique with oils, and almost none with acrylic or alchohol based.