I have a problem that I am having a little bit of difficulty in solving, and I thought perhaps that someone with your expertise with blades and tools might be able to help me solve. I need to try and grind/sand ink off of a 24 sq piece of hide. I have 10,000-12,000 to do so I need to be able to do it fairly fast.
I have some flat panels of white dried leather 4 inches by 6 inches(about 110mm by 160 mm) by 1.5-2.0 mm thick. The dried leather is very tough, a lot like wood except that you can bend it a little. I got them from Thailand in the past, but they are becoming more difficult to find, so we thought we could try and remove the ink and re use them. (most are just what we call mis-prints. We make post cards out of them. The dried ink is fairly tough to remove. We cannot use any solvents to get the ink off, as it would wreck the leather and cause it to warp. We have tried sanding and sand blasting. Both were able to remove the ink, but took so long that our labor cost was more than the value of the blank piece. We tried using a 4 inch bench planer, but it was way too aggressive and fairly dangerous. We have also tried coarse grinding wheels without much success. Our goal would be to clean each piece (approx 24 sq in) in 30 seconds or less. That would allow us to do approximately 120 pieces per hour, since we have thousands that need to be cleaned. I need to get the proper tool to do this or build something from scratch that would do the job.
Thank you for your time.
Steve
I have some flat panels of white dried leather 4 inches by 6 inches(about 110mm by 160 mm) by 1.5-2.0 mm thick. The dried leather is very tough, a lot like wood except that you can bend it a little. I got them from Thailand in the past, but they are becoming more difficult to find, so we thought we could try and remove the ink and re use them. (most are just what we call mis-prints. We make post cards out of them. The dried ink is fairly tough to remove. We cannot use any solvents to get the ink off, as it would wreck the leather and cause it to warp. We have tried sanding and sand blasting. Both were able to remove the ink, but took so long that our labor cost was more than the value of the blank piece. We tried using a 4 inch bench planer, but it was way too aggressive and fairly dangerous. We have also tried coarse grinding wheels without much success. Our goal would be to clean each piece (approx 24 sq in) in 30 seconds or less. That would allow us to do approximately 120 pieces per hour, since we have thousands that need to be cleaned. I need to get the proper tool to do this or build something from scratch that would do the job.
Thank you for your time.
Steve
