Cleaning wood blocks

[Luci in AZ]

I just finished unmounting 25 SU sets and was wondering what is the best way to clean the wood blocks since they are sticky on both sides? I know many of you have unmounted your stamps so I was wondering what solutions worked for you?

[kphorse]

What do you plan to do with them?

[Luci in AZ]

I really don't have a clue on what I am going to do with them at this point but I have heard of donating them to different organizations or painting them and letting the grandkids play with them.

[cbet]

Here's what I did when I first started unmounting them. It worked really well:

1) Used a big fluffy brush to dust baby powder over the sticky

2) Took a sanding block and sanded them off. The baby powder made it so the sticky stuff didn't gunk up the sanding block.

It worked really well, but it's a lot of work for not really much payoff. After about 4 sets, I said "The heck with this noise" and just started chucking the blocks in the garbage, unless they were a size that I knew I had an immediate use for. I had quite a few sets that I never mounted on the wood and I kept all those blocks for future projects, so i already had a pretty good collection of blocks.

[stamphappy1650]

I gave away some of my blocks but most I just threw away because even using my electric sander it still wasn't worth it.

For the big blocks I wanted to save I used a very sharp putty knife to scrape off most of the goo and then sanded what little was left. You have to be careful not to have your fingers in the way when you scrape the block.

[xayide2]

I'll have to remember the baby powder before sanding them next. I used 8 of mine for the Tim Holtz foam blenders.

[jeannemlehrman]

Oops paint remover will take sticky off of everything - including wood blocks, price stickers from glass and plastic - gum, etc...

[backroom]

What I did was cut pieces of scrap cardstock to size and with the help of a glue stick, stuck them on each side of the wooden block. It did take a lot of time, but I did it while I was watching TV. I had hundreds and donated a bunch to the school that I work at for special education kids to play with. They became functional and pretty at the same time.