Pen ink in dryer drum

Hi,... first posting, pardon booboos. Need help ridding dryer drum of leaked out pen ink from ball point! I already used nail polish remover, which helped to a degree, but there are still long dark blue streaks inside, they do not come off on clothes, but are unsightly! Any tips?

 

Try denatured alcohol on a soft cloth. Keep wiping the stain until no more ink comes off. Then take a clean damp cloth and remove the alcohol. Please be careful when using any flammable liquid in a dryer. It could cause an explsion or fire. Good luck.

 

Cheap hairspray seems to remove any type of ink. I learned this when I worked in groceries and we got pricing ink on our clothes. Be sure to wipe afterwards with a wet (water) rag and let it air out before using dryer.

 

Timinindy's advice may work however I would suggest you spray it on a rag and wipe rather than spraying it in the dryer drum.

 

Stick with majakdragon's first post. The ingredient in hairspray that dissolves ink is alcohol, but it also contains other ingredients like lacquer which can interfere with the ink removal.

 

Thanks on the tips, but what is denatured alcohol? For removing pen ink from dryer drum...is it like rubbing alcohol?

 

Rubbing alcohol is also known as isopropryl alcohol, which is a from of butyl alcohol and has four carbons in the molecule. What you drink as liquor is ehtyl alochol, which has two carbons. Ethyl alcohol is a fantastic cleaner and disinfectant, but it's use is highly regulated and taxed, so using it as a cleaning agent has some financial drawbacks. To get around this, ingredients are added to ethyl alcohol making it undrinkable. This is denatured alcohol. Either rubbing alcohol or denatured ethyl alcohol will dissolve ink.

 

Always apply any cleaner used inside dryer drum to a rag first. Rubbing alcohol, which is the mildest household solvent and often quite handy, is recommended for ballpoint ink removal. Allow surface to dry and odors to dissipate. Throw in a couple old towels to assure that no ink comes off on laundry. Any remaining ink stain on dryer drum will not affect laundry and may disappear over time.

 

While trying every solvent based suggestion on this and other sites, and having very little luck, it occurred to me that the issue was a stained enamel painted metal surface. What was needed was to renew the paint. I used automotive rubbing compound and a brillo pad to quickly take the stain out of the very top layer of the paint. I suppose that I could have used a rag and taken a little longer if I was interested in a mirror surface on the inside of the dryer.

My dryer looks new, with absolutely no traces of the ink. In addition I did not have to worry about fumes, and any residual rubbing compound wipes off with a damp rag. The whole job took 20 minutes.

 

After reading all the tips, decided to combine a few. Bingo! This worked like a charm! Put rubber gloves on. Put 2 C bleach in a bucket and added some water until about 1/2 full. Soaked an old large beach towel in the water. I guess you could use 2 regular size towels. It absorbed all the water and no need to "wring" it out. Put it in the dryer and turned it on. Checked it about 30 minutes later and most of the ink was GONE. There were a few heavy spots of ink left, so again using rubber gloves, took the still wet towel out, put some fingernail polish remover on a Mr. Clean Magic Pad and the spots came out instantly. There were some residual swirls of ink left, so put the wet towel back in the dryer for another 15 minutes. The drum was SPARKLING after that. It looks brand new inside! I did wipe down the inside with a clean wet dishrag afterwards to get any bleach that might have been left. It was really easy! Highly recommend this method!

 

Hi y'all,
I was wondering if anyone knows how to get dye out of the dryer drum. I have a turquoise sweatshirt that left dye all inside the drum and left dye on some of my clothes, even though I used a Color Catcher sheet by Shout (which worked before). Before I can dry my whites, I need to remove the dye left behind. I will try some of the suggestions on pen ink removal but if someone out there has a easier and better solution, I would like to hear it.
Thanks.

 

Just a safety note. Very old gas dryers use a pilot light. I know because I owned one. So if you have a pilot light turn it out before using any flammable liquid.

 

My dryer is electric but I really can't use clorox because of our septic system. Any suggestions?

 

You can always try hydrogen peroxide on the rags and let them tumble around the dryer. Once the ink, pen is baked on there sometimes, unless you want to repaint it...it is what it is. Most of the time once its in and gone thru a few cycles it doesnt transfer any more. I have heard of goo gone taking some of it off. But that will also remove the paint.

 

I tried this and it worked beautifully! Thanks!

 

I got ink in the dryer and thought I was doomed!!! Today someone told me to use DAWN POWER DISSOLVER!!!!! WOW! This works with NO effort. (UNPLUG DRYER) Just spray on, leave for 15-20 min (even on the tough spots), and then WIPE off! Make sure to wipe down again with a wet cloth and let dry before use.

This product can be found near the dish soaps at Wal-Mart!

 

Thanks zoombroom!!! Your tip about soaking towels in bleach and water worked like a charm! My husband left a purple paint pen in his pocket. The dryer was a mess. After two hours of useless scrubbing with a rag and rubbing alcohol, I got smart and found your post. Used two white towels and soaked them in half bleach and half water. Tumbled for about 20 minutes on low heat and voila - all clean! Got two clean "water-only" soaked towels in now just to make sure the bleach gets rinsed out. Thanks again!!

 

Bleach will work on most anything, and in a situation like this, even if you have to get a little inventive, it will still work wonders.

 

 

After getting ink from a pen on the drying drum, I found on this site the idea of using car compounding. I had a bottle of headlight cleaner-polish. Heated the dryer slightly and then the Turtle wax clean/polisher. No rubbing or scrubbing. The uniforms that got the stain all over them was had set for several days in the dryer. I soaked them for about one hour in rubbing alcohol then washed them in Murphy's vegetable soap. I had a pair of shorts that was not presoaked in the alcohol cover with the ink also. All came out clean of the ink.

 

okay, so I just signed up to this site so I could thank people for giving advice. Thank you people for giving advice.

I combined a few of them, and very successfully and easily got the ink out of the dryer drum. The advice I went with was putting nail polish remover containing acetone onto a magic eraser pad. The ink came right out, it was super easy and quick. Thanks! I did a water wipe up afterwards then put some wet rags into dry afterwards to make sure nothing bad was going to happen to the next load, but I'm not sure if those steps were necessary or not.

Then, I had to deal with the load of whites and greys I'd washed, and dried, with a blue pen. oops. I threw away the jeans that had had the pen in them and 2 tshirts that had gotten the worst of it without trying to save them. I may have been able to, but it wasn't worth it to me to try. Then, again combining advice, I sprayed hairspray on the now -set-in ink stains on 17 of my cotton tshirts. I let it soak for probably 10 min or so, then washed it on hot with oxiclean. That worked pretty darn well, and saved almost all of the shirts, but there were still a few stubborn spots on a few of them, so I did it again. Hairspray, brief soak in, then hot water wash with oxiclean. Now all but two of the shirts looked perfect. Not sure if it was the alchohol in the hairspray, or the oxiclean, or the combo of the two, but it worked great.

Here's where I got cocky.

I put bleach, undiluted, with an old toothbrush onto the stubborn stains. It felt like about 30 sec when I noticed a discoloration happening to my slightly off white shirt -- oops! I rushed it to the sink to wash it all out, and yes, I did forever alter the color. So now I'm experimenting -- Just for the heck of it, I applied more bleach to random spots with the toothbrush, so there will be not just the two of them, and then put it in to soak in cool water with bleach in my washing machine. Not sure what's going to happen, but I saved almost all of the load, so I'm still pretty psyched.