[Midnight Rose]

Originally Posted by clmayfield

Sanding down the inlay fixed this and will also remove the impression in the plastic (if this is a plastic inlay). Use ~150 grit sandpaper, scratching the entire surface until the impression is gone. The inlay will look scratched up when you are done. The point of this step is to remove material. Next, use ~300 grit sandpaper to smooth the inlay area until it is homogenous. Wet-or-dry sandpaper works best for this. You can apply a drop of mineral oil to keep the sandpaper unclogged. This will leave a satiny finish. If you want a super-smooth, shiny finish, polish with 600 grit wet-or-dry sandpaper using mineral oil as before. I am doing this for a lot of chips, so I bought a flexishaft tool and some mini-sanding discs. I will post the results when I am finished.

I was hoping for an update from you about this, but I went ahead and tried it anyway. And now I'm thinking that I don't want to do this for all of the chips I was planning on doing this to.

I went to Menards to try to find the sandpaper, since I didn't have any luck finding those grits anywhere else (I should've tried a dedicated hardware store, though, hmm). After getting an education I hadn't expected in Dremmel tools and such, the clerk and I concluded that none of the tools had the right grit discs (all of them were 120 grit or less). This turned out to be a good thing, since I wasn't anxious to spend upwards of $75 plus discs, just to do this one project.

They sent me to the paint area, where I found the right grit papers. Way, way too many choices there for me (I'm not a DIY kinda chick, after all), but I finally settled on 3M Sandblaster paper.

I'm sitting here right now destroying a black Paulson Cherry that has seen better days. But it feels too weird doing this, and I have to "dig" deep just to take all of the tattoo off the chip. That leaves a deeper inlay than I was prepared for, so I may just say screw it and just re-stamp over the current tattoos. Not sure yet, I'll see how I feel when I've applied the 300 grit paper. I decided to bypass 600 totally.

[links_slayer]

are all your chips cherries, rose? there was a recent post of a starburst that had the stamp removed and was re-stamped. imo it looked pretty cool. i don't think cherries would look good re-stamped though.

good luck with whatever route you take. it seems quite tedious and consistency would be a concern if i were doing it.

[abby99]

The chip that Links is referring to belongs to JCTC, but I wasn't able to find the post. The key to his success, imo, is the starburst pattern that was left in the chip. I agree that it wouldn't work as well with Cherries.

If the plan is to add a label, would it be possible to fill in the depressions with something instead of trying to sand down the recess to the deepest point of the hot stamp?

[clmayfield]

Originally Posted by Midnight Rose

I was hoping for an update from you about this, but I went ahead and tried it anyway. And now I'm thinking that I don't want to do this for all of the chips I was planning on doing this to.

I went to Menards to try to find the sandpaper, since I didn't have any luck finding those grits anywhere else (I should've tried a dedicated hardware store, though, hmm). After getting an education I hadn't expected in Dremmel tools and such, the clerk and I concluded that none of the tools had the right grit discs (all of them were 120 grit or less). This turned out to be a good thing, since I wasn't anxious to spend upwards of $75 plus discs, just to do this one project.

They sent me to the paint area, where I found the right grit papers. Way, way too many choices there for me (I'm not a DIY kinda chick, after all), but I finally settled on 3M Sandblaster paper.

I'm sitting here right now destroying a black Paulson Cherry that has seen better days. But it feels too weird doing this, and I have to "dig" deep just to take all of the tattoo off the chip. That leaves a deeper inlay than I was prepared for, so I may just say screw it and just re-stamp over the current tattoos. Not sure yet, I'll see how I feel when I've applied the 300 grit paper. I decided to bypass 600 totally.

For a chick... this is a lot of work and rough on your fingers. Us men don't mind quarter inch deep calluses on our fingertips, but that is no so becoming on a woman. I have removed the hot stamps from 3 racks of my River City chips. I used a flexi-shaft tool to do the first round of digging down... that works well enough on a vinyl inlay, but on a hot-stamped chip, I am afraid that manual is the way to go.

Right, now I am working on a way to add back the cross-hatches. I might be seeing what Lazerchip on this site can do.

I am also considering for the 4 other racks that I need to de-hotstamp of running a sweatshop with about 4 day-laborers.

Oh, for the love of chips.

[Midnight Rose]

Originally Posted by links_slayer

are all your chips cherries, rose? there was a recent post of a starburst that had the stamp removed and was re-stamped. imo it looked pretty cool. i don't think cherries would look good re-stamped though.

I'm experimenting with a mix of chips for now. And it occurs to me that I'm spending way, way more to get Paulsons, remove the stamps, sand them down, and restamp them again, than it would for me to just buy some brand new blank Tmolds or Hourglass chips. As Mayfield said, oh for the love of chips.

good luck with whatever route you take. it seems quite tedious and consistency would be a concern if i were doing it.

True, but I'm looking at this as a long-term project; I don't really have the time to devote to it as is, let alone do a huge amount of chips, so I'm doing it one chip at a time, for now.

Still, it's sad to see the Cherry be not so much a cherry anymore. BTW, did the person you have in mind, remove the gold and the tattoo too, or just the gold?

[links_slayer]

Originally Posted by Midnight Rose

BTW, did the person you have in mind, remove the gold and the tattoo too, or just the gold?

just the gold. i'll see if i can find a pic.

[links_slayer]

here you go:

Originally Posted by jsmithjr732

To add to the list, I received about 500 chips for a hot stamp job I'm doing. I would not spend the money to have these hot stamped as the warping is severe. I took four random chips out and compared them to a flame mold hot stamp I had -- all were wobbly. The flame mold chip was rock-solid.

JCTC -- as far as the Paulson starbursts are concerned, you'll know soon enough how they look... For now, here's a teaser from another batch I did:

[NanaBanana]

Originally Posted by Midnight Rose

I

Still, it's sad to see the Cherry be not so much a cherry anymore.

Whew........when I first read this thread, I was terrified that you were about to ostracize those beautiful bear claws! What a relief, they're still intact..... (they are aren't they?)

[Midnight Rose]

Originally Posted by NanaBanana

Whew........when I first read this thread, I was terrified that you were about to ostracize those beautiful bear claws! What a relief, they're still intact..... (they are aren't they?)

They definitely are. Those chips are going to my grave* with me...intact.


*I'm getting cremated. But still.

(BTW, thanks Links. The more I look at that image, the more I get used to the idea of removing the gold, not the tattoo.)

[abby99]

Originally Posted by Midnight Rose

(BTW, thanks Links. The more I look at that image, the more I get used to the idea of removing the gold, not the tattoo.)

That's the image I was thinking of. Thanks, Links. The "tatoo" looks as if it's part of the design. Personally, I think it's a very cool look.