[Marly 11]

Good Morning,
                       I had a call yesterday from a chap who has chewing gum on his sofas they are 100% cotton. does anyone know of the best method for removing the gum?




cheers M11

[vangaurd]

blow torch

[lands]

Marly, try testing prochem's chewing gum remover. It's an aerosol and if you get spray close it should stay away from fibres for most part and besides it tends to brush off most things I've used it on. Start removing with a blunt knife and keep respraying (subject to pre test of course) but use now a terry towel and you should be able to loosen it enough to then extract most out with your hand tool. Tell customer it will never be perfect but a lot better.

Pete

[Ken Wainwright]

Given an unknown (by me) piece of upholstery, I would tend to use one of the Rid-A-Gum or Solution type products. Certainly on carpet tiles these products are less aggressive to the backings, and given that the cotton fabric here may have a flame retardent treatment that may be solvent sensitive, I would carry out all necessary tests first and then talk the options through with the customer.  I would suspect that using a gum freezer is more likely to damage the fabric.

Safe and happy cleaning
Ken

[carpetguy]

Agree with K W, the Rid A Gum or similar, will break down the gum, for easy removal, rather make it brittle and likely to pullout fibres, as a freeze / spray, might.

[lands]

See what you guys are saying. I did my method once and it came out okay but based on what you are saying I guess I got lucky. The sofa was pretty tough though.

Pete

[Marly 11]

Thank you all your very helpful

[Glynn]

Dont know if you have one but the DM uph tool is very good at removing chewing gum from upholstery.