Have you ever had to throw away one of your favorite brushes because you couldn't clean the dried paint out if it? I threw away a few until I found a Winsor & Newton brush cleaner that worked like magic to get dried oil paint out of my brushes.
I used this solvent-based product for a couple of decades and loved it. I still have use of many of my most valued oil painting brushes that I've had for 25 years or more, all because of this amazing product.
Recently however, I was running low on it and ordered a bottle. I noticed that the label had changed, but since I hadn't ordered it in several years, I figured they had just redesigned the label and, although I wasn't sure, I ordered it anyway.
I soon found out that Winsor & Newton had indeed changed the formulation from a solvent-based to a water-based one. I even emailed them and they verified that the formulation had in fact, been changed.
To my dismay, I could no longer get my treasured brushes anywhere near as clean using the new formulation as I had been able to using the old one. I even soaked my brushes for the suggested 24 hours, to no avail.
So, I set out to find a different product that had the comparable cleaning power that I had experienced with the original W & N Brush Cleaner & Restorer. I found it and I didn't even have to mail order it!
I still had a tiny bit of the old W & N brush cleaner, as pictured below in the 4.2 oz bottle on the far left. I decided to demonstrate to everyone the effectiveness of the W & N original formulation compared to the new W & N formulation, pictured center, as well as to a particular 'Goof Off' brand product, which I found at my local Ace Hardware store.
This Goof Off formula is labeled specifically for getting dried latex OR oil-based paint out of carpet! I figured if it would work on carpet fibers, then why not on paint brushes?
Well, it worked like a dream! It works exactly how I remember the old Winsor & Newton brush cleaner. But you don't have to take my word for it, because I've posted the proof in photos below!
Below you will see each of 3 brushes, one for each product, with equal amounts of a dried oil paint/Liquin combination on them that I use all the time in my painting. I applied the paint mixture to each brush consecutively and let them dry for 24 hours. You can see the dried bristles in the closeups.
I placed approximately equal amounts of each cleaner in the kidney basins, wet the bristles with the products, then let the brushes sit for about an hour. Then, I agitated the brushes in the basins and scrubbed them around in the palm of my hand, then rinsed them under running water. I repeated this process until the water ran clear from the brushes.
I photographed the brushes after this process to show how clean they got merely from the brush cleaners.
Finally, I cleaned each of the 3 brushes with Dawn dishwashing liquid and water to clean any remaining brush cleaner from the brushes to prevent deterioration of my brushes by the chemicals in the cleaners.
Below, you will also see the completely cleaned and dried brushes, thus the final result of the effectiveness of each brush-cleaning product.
I highly recommend Goof Off Paint Remover for Carpet to clean your brushes of oil paint! Although I did not try using latex paint, I believe it most likely would be effective on that as well.
I hope this post helps other people to get dried paint from their brushes, particularly oil paint.
Happy Painting!
Demo Process in Number Order
1. Left to Right: left: old (original) Winsor & Newton Brush Cleaner & Restorer, center: new W & N Brush Cleaner & Restorer - note difference in labels between the two), right: Goof Off Paint Remover for Carpet (available at Ace Hardware.)
2. In the following photos, you can see the dried paint on the 3 brushes, as well as the paint that was released from each brush upon soaking it in the product whose bottle is standing directly behind the basins.
left: old Winsor & Newton formulation
left: "new" Winsor & Newton formulation. Note the lack of released paint in the basin!left: Goof Off Paint Remover for Carpet
left: All 3 brushes in their respective brush cleaners after one hour and agitating them on my palm
left: old W & N formulation
left: current (new) W & N formulation 
left: Goof Off Paint Remover for Carpet product
Comments
Post a Comment