Post #370013 by Polynesiac on Sat, Mar 29, 2008 9:12 AM

Great ideas everyone and thank you all for your input!
I finally got off my butt and went to michaels to see what they had and what I could try - I looked at HOme DEPOT but all their cleaners seemed to strong and industrial and I assumed that they would burn through the entire record cover! Because Jen did such a great step by step with goo gone, I decided to try a few other techniques.

For both techniques I decided to remove the price tag to the point that it started to mess up the cover, so each record cover has a small peeled portion on them. I also used older records that do not have that glossy sheen on them (the coated records seem to not hold onto the sticker as strongly as the non-coated records)

For the first technique, I purchased this:

Here's a photo after trying to remove the sticker simply by peeling it. NOTE: the small damaged area under the peeled sticker:

These moist towelettes claimed they would remove paint and other solvents from tools and hands (maybe this will work for your martian antennas drawn on your records, bora boris?). It was only 2.99 or something, so I decided to give it a try. Here's the first progress shot:

these little puppies require quite a lot of scrubbing, but they do slowly eat away at the sticker. they seem to remove the sticker quite nicely, but the glue residue is still left behind and I used my fingers just to wipe that away. the chemical solvent on the towel didn't seem to mar the undamaged portion of the cover, however it did widen the part that was already damaged by trying to remove the sticker previously:

In conclusion, these towels worked pretty well, but required a little elbow grease and I would assume the harder I scrubbed, the more likely I would be to begin working into the record cover and cause damage. This may be the way to remove marker writing on records, however.

The next technique is the method that BB moondog suggested and I found it at Michaels for 9.99:

I once again lifted the sticker until it began to mar the surface of the record:

This stuff smells like it will work well, so I grabbed a q-tip, dunked in the bestine and moistened the sticker:

I moistened the sticker, let it air dry for a few seconds, then peeled the sticker right off!

The bestine seemed to have desintigrated the glue and allowed the sticker to be removed without any damage to the record cover, leaving no film or residue behind or a dark area where the sticker was. It didn't even worsen the damage to the cover I inflicted when I tried to originally peel off the sticker!

I think I've found my technique. THank you all once again for your input and feel free to post pictures of your techniques too - because (depending on how the record cover is made) they may work better on different types of record covers!