"How do you remove dried paint from brushes?" Topic

Dumb story, I know. 🙄
I had some brushes soaking in a tub of water. Well, the water evaporated and I'm left with some brushes with dried goo in the bristles.

How would you recover them?

Try Murphy's Oil Soap.
Also alcohol and amonia are solvents for acrylic paint, seperately not together.

A good soak in Murphy's and then gently massaging teh bristles should get most of teh paint out.

Any paint remover should work. Simple Green cleaning solution, full strength, would be my go-to: low cost, available at most big box stores, safe in septic systems and non-toxic. Cheers!

I'm assuming acrylic paints? Hot soapy water, but first stop by an art supply shop. They all seem to sell something which amounts to a specialized bar of soap. "Masters' Brush Cleaner and Artist's Soap."

I have Simple Green on hand. I'll try that first. 👍

+ 1 Robert Piepenbrink

Nail polish remover (100% acetone) always works for me. It gets the paint out all the way to the ferrule. Works on both natural and synthetic.

Masters brush cleaner removes some and reconditions the brush – great stuff

To really get rid of dried paint – Windsor and Newton paint remover

John

I've used B&J "The Masters" Brush Cleaner and Preserver, but I don't think I've ever gotten brushes quite as dried out as you did.

If all else fails (warning! Last thing to make the brushes useful again, and you probably won't like this!), cut off the ferrule and carve the handle into whatever point pleases you--you can make pretty decent sculpting tools for working with Green Stuff.

Grelber

Brushes now soaking in both Simple Green and acetone.
The quality of those brushes before the criminal neglect was spotty. They had been degraded to drybrushing and painting white glue on bases for terraining.
But, still. 🤷