Interior Non-skid Stains

Ever since I bought my 1977 E32-2 a little over a year ago, I have been trying to get rid of some pre-existing black stains on the interior non-skid.
I have tried just about everything that West Marine sells as stain remover to no avail. I have also tried Comet, Barkeepers, Ajax with bleach, Purple Power, Simple Green and acetone.

I have used rags, brushes, scrubbers and sponges. Nothing works.

Any thoughts before I give up and paint it??

Thanks,
Charles

Before you paint, how about a razor blade or fine sandpaper?

Given that the stained surface is molded-in (dimpled) non-skid, sandpaper, scrapers and razor blades would not work and would probably harm the surface.

Charles

Bleach from a Clorox container soaked in a rag?

2 suggestions

- On/Off

or

- Buff with a Makita 9227 and some 3M super duty. Using a wool pad, you should be able to get in the texture.

Removing black spots in the nonskid.

Charles, Try laying an acetone soaked rag on some of the black spots and place something over the rag to keep it from evaporating. The first thing that comes to mind is a cheap sauce pan or fry pan lid from the 99 cent store. Anyhow, let it sit there for a period of time you determine (hopefully) works and immediately after removing the rag, attack the spots with a white 3M scrubber or the like. On second thought, try something as deck friendly as a wooden chop stick and if that doesn't work then try the 3M. I mention all this because I had great luck removing epoxy paint from the Formica counter top in my vintage Airstream kind of that way. A pervious owner had painted over the perfectly good canary yellow top (very 1969) with cream epoxy paint and nothing I tried, i.e. scraping, etc seemed to even touch the paint. By pure accident I laid an acetone saturated rag on the epoxy and within 10-20 seconds I realized what I had done and took it off expecting, no hoping to find that nothing had happened. Well, let me tell you that something had happened, the epoxy beneath the rag had reticulated enough that I was able to scrape it off with ease, just what I was trying to do in the first place. If you try again and leave the acetone on the black spots for a bit, I'll bet you can lift them right off. Want to see what our 1969 Airstream Caravel looks like? Go to http://vintageairstream.com/archives/69Caravel/index.html and the first set of photos that pop up on the left is it. Click on any image and it will enlarge to the right. How do you like that screaming yellow counter top? Good luck, Glyn Judson, E31 hull #55, Marina del Rey, CA

We never had much luck on getting a few of the really stubborn stains out on our old 32-2. The worst were right next to the companionway ladder, which were covered nicely by a rug with nonskid tape on the underside. I hope you have better luck than we did.

Try Stove Alcohol

I used stove alcohol on a rag and some elbow grease and got our interior nonskid pretty clean but not completely spotless,