Removing silicone

[chgriffin]

All
I am trying to re-imagine an old project. I used silicone to "glue" my glass to a surface. Now three years later, I want to remove the silicone and refire my design. I am having trouble removing the silicone. I have used a strait blade and removed most, but still have residual. I have tried acetone for that, but not much luck. Any ideas???
Thanks in advance
chrys

[Brad Walker]

Try a silicone remover. Any decent hardware store should carry it. CRL has some also.

[chgriffin]

Thanks.......did not know there was an actual "remover". I just thot of a solvent.

[Greg Rawls]

Had the same problem on a flat piece. Put it in the kiln, took it to 800F and slow cool. Burned off the silicon completely.

[chgriffin]

Well, I must have purchased the wrong silicone remover.......it did not work. I will return it. I used a diamond hand finishing pad, and now I will try the 800 kiln. At this point, I should have just remade a new project!! Ah well, the thrill of the chase!
Thanks for the replies!
chrys

[Morganica]

You have to let it sit--the solvent needs time to penetrate into the silicone--and potentially scrape away the dissolving silicone to expose fresh stuff until it's all removed. That's a pretty common problem; I needed to remove a UV-cure epoxy once and it took about a week of scraping and applying fresh solvent (an entire can of the stuff) to get it off.

[Sharon S.]

This past week, I removed some with a heat gun. Just softened it and scraped it off.

[Morganica]

Sharon, it's probably all gone, but you might want to hit it with a solvent just in case. I used to glue weights onto pieces I put in the rociprolap, using silicone. When they were done, I'd heat up the piece and scrape the silicone off with a razor. Started getting black schmutz in the siliconed areas, and finally realized I wasn't getting it ALL off.

[Tony Smith]

Be very careful using a heat gun on fused glass... in fact, I would say never use a heat gun on fused glass. It's a perfect tool to thermally shock the glass and break it.

[Sharon S.]

I should have clarified, I was removing glue, from a plexiglass base...after building a dam for casting, not silicone. True about residue, though, I never thought of that.

[Georgia Novak]

I soak pieces I have used E-6000 on in acetone in a sealed cool whip or other "free" container so the acetone will not evaporate. Might take an hour or a day.