A Very Specific Cleaning Question

June 17, 2020 2:47 PM

I’ve been cleaning my phone with alcohol swabs since corona. I put it on a wooden end table after cleaning one day and it left a transfer of the back of the phone including a reversed logo on the table. How do I clean it off, if that’s even possible? Regular cleaner and alcohol have done nothing.
posted by vanitas to Home & Garden (13 answers total)

Acetone (aka nail polish remover), perhaps?
posted by sacrifix at 2:48 PM on June 17, 2020

Acetone may well remove the finish completely... ask me how I know.
posted by kate4914 at 2:57 PM on June 17, 2020 [8 favorites]

When you say "a transfer of the back of the phone including a reversed logo on the table" is this some kind of actual dye/paint transfer from a phone case, or just lightened (or darkened) areas on the table where the phone did/did not touch?

If it's the latter, it may evaporate on its own over a day or two, or at least fade. At that point, you can try one of the home remedies for alcohol finish damage on wood, the first of which is usually rubbing down the surface with oil. But you may have damaged the finish enough that it'll still lift and crack even after the oil, but you won't know for a couple of weeks probably.
posted by Lyn Never at 3:04 PM on June 17, 2020 [1 favorite]

I think cleaning it off with very very fine grit sandpaper is the way to go here, because it will remove an extremely shallow and controllable layer of the surface without adding anything, and leave an almost mirror finish behind. I'd say 1200 grit minimum, wet/dry.
posted by jamjam at 3:41 PM on June 17, 2020

Magic eraser? But it's basically ultra-fine grit sandpaper, so be aware it will remove some table finish as well and may change the surface appearance if the table is glossy.
posted by GuyZero at 4:00 PM on June 17, 2020 [3 favorites]

Try a hair dryer on high power?

Not joking: this is how my husband erases bourbon spots on our floor. It melts and redistributes the varnish.

I didn't believe this would work, either.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 4:06 PM on June 17, 2020 [1 favorite]

(Llamas are slobs.)
posted by A Terrible Llama at 4:07 PM on June 17, 2020 [8 favorites]

On the wood table --spray furniture polish on the area and let it sit for a bit before wiping it away.
posted by loveandhappiness at 5:07 PM on June 17, 2020 [1 favorite]

Try toothpaste, which has fine abrasive in it.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 6:13 PM on June 17, 2020

First, you need to determine whether the phone has ADDED a layer of residue to the table, or REMOVED a layer of varnish from the table. Once you’ve figured that out, you can choose from the methods above. Sandpaper/magic eraser to remove residue, hair dryer or furniture polish to fix or smooth missing varnish.
posted by mekily at 6:46 PM on June 17, 2020 [6 favorites]

To lower the likelihood that something similar will happen again, you might care to consider acquiring an ultraviolet phone sanitizer. For the prices these things are available at now, it might even pay for itself in reduced swab consumption.
posted by flabdablet at 10:24 PM on June 17, 2020

Please read a book on wood finishing (it doesn't have to be too technical, so long as it covers shellac, varnish, polyurethane and lacquer -- Wood Finishing Simplified, for example). It's straightforward to figure out what kind of finish you have and how to fix it, but just applying random suggestions could result in making your problem bigger quickly, resulting in having to strip the whole table down to repair it.
posted by flimflam at 11:05 PM on June 17, 2020 [2 favorites]

if you have a printed newspaper, try balling it up and scrubbing the area with it.

i have a black laquer table this works on for lesser scars like heat transfer, might work on this.
posted by domino at 6:58 AM on June 18, 2020