I tested 9 different tricks to revive dried out Sharpies, but the tricks should work on any alcohol-based permanent markers. Some of them worked well and some of them did not.
The solutions tested were:
- Tap water
- Distilled water
- Acetone
- Mineral spirits
- Vinegar (15% strength)
- Hydrogen Peroxide
- Isopropyl alcohol (91%)
- Isopropyl alcohol (70%)
- Hand Sanitizer (62% ethyl alcohol)
The reason I wanted to test this in the first place was that my kids kept leaving their markers uncapped and they’d dry out. Sharpies get expensive if you have to keep buying them over and over! But now that I know how to fix them, the next thing I have to do is figure out how to teach these kids to put the caps on properly so I don’t have to fix them in the first place.
Anyway, I got all these tricks from all over the Internet — Reddit, YouTube, etc. I was dubious about the effectiveness of some of them but I thought they were worth a try.
First I took a sample of the baseline performance for all the markers so we’d have something to compare the results to, then I uncapped them and let them dry out under a running fan.
Once they were good and dried out, I initiated the test by submerging them into each individual test solution for 5 minutes, then blotted the tips dry and tested them again.
Most of the test solutions didn’t work with a crap, and the acetone worked too well! It started dissolving the plastic cup I was using to contain it, and it seemed to leech a lot of ink out of the marker!
For some reason, the Isopropyl alcohol (70%) outperformed the Isopropyl alcohol (91%), but my favorite by far was the hand sanitizer which contained 70% ethyl alcohol.
It really seemed to be the sweet spot for performance / gentleness and got the sharpie rejuvenated. On that note, I decided to test all the Sharpies that didn’t make it with the hand sanitizer and had great results!
I really like the way the color from each marker was suspended in the hand sanitizer gel. Pretty cool!
After 5 more minutes I re-tested the markers that had failed the earlier test to see if the hand sanitizer revitalized them, and… Success! They all revived nicely.
I re-tested them again a week later to see if the results would last, and they did. I highly recommend trying hand sanitizer if you’ve got a dried out Sharpie. I had success with using 70% ethyl alcohol, gel based hand sanitizer and you can find a link right here: https://amzn.to/48mu2FU
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