How to get INK off of an Awning?

[JCruse]

I was marking the ends of the inner support tubes on an ARB awning with a Sharpie to keep from pulling them out too far during setup and the marker leaked into the palm of my hand. Not realizing this I rolled the awning back up and got blue ink smudges all the way down the center of the material. The heavier spots went right through. Does anyone know of a good way to get this off without damaging the awning?


I tried Goo-Gone and Oops in small spots to see if they'd work. The GG barely dented it and the Oops was taking the beige dye off with the ink.


The awning is only a couple weeks old and needless to say I'm really bummed.






.

 

[Redgrrr]

Have you tried Denatured alcohol?

 

[JCruse]

I don't have any but I'll get it Monday if it'll work.

Have you ever tried it on tent material? I'm asking because of the safety issue. Whatever dye they used came off pretty quickly with the solvent based product I tried.

 

[badlander]

Redgrrr hit it. We use denatured alcohol all the time to remove sharpie ink on metal. The only one that is a problem is the red color, it stains the metal and leaves permanent traces. I doubt if the alcohol would hurt the awning material but try a test spot to be safe. Good luck.

 

[jjfj80]

Try going to a place that screen prints t-shirts. They will typically have a spot cleaning gun.
It's designed for plastisol inks, but I've used one successfully on sharpie ink and pen ink.

 

[JCruse]

Wow thanks guys.

I've been too busy to do anything yet, but soon. It really sucks looking at a brand new spotless awning - with a line of blue spots down the center. And on both sides, it bled right through. At first it was hard to tell which side it started on.
I will try the alcohol soon and post the results in case anyone else is ever clumsy enough to be in the same, ummm... spot.