Personally, I find it impossible to do a resin project without getting some on my hands.
Yes, I use gloves. But somehow, resin gets on my skin anyway.
So then I wash my hands. But resin doesn’t dissolve in water, so they’re still sticky.
And in the past, I’ve dealt with this by pouring denatured alcohol on my hands, because alcohol dissolves resin.
But pouring chemicals on ones hands probably isn’t the best plan. So what is the best way to remove resin from skin? I tested 5 different methods to find out!
The best way to remove resin from skin is by using hand sanitizer. Apply a liberal amount – at least triple a normal application. Then dry your hands using a rag or towel.
Don’t have hand sanitizer? No problem! Some of the other methods I tried worked too!
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Methodology
I used this general craft resin, and mixed it as normal. Then I added some blue mica powder just so it would be visible on my hands.
Then I dumped some resin on my hands, and rubbed my hands together. I figured I should be thorough.
It is worth noting that you should wear gloves when working with resin. Resin is not good for your skin, and some would say it’s downright dangerous.
I’ve never had a skin reaction to resin and felt fairly safe performing this experiment, but generally you should not be aiming to get resin on your skin.
Regardless, after getting resin on my hands, I attempted to remove it using each of the methods below.
Most methods I removed using a towel, since I didn’t want to add water as another variable to the experiment. The exception to this was the baking soda and dish soap method, which is intended to be used with water.
1. Baking Soda and Dish Soap
This is a common mixture for cleaning, because dish soap breaks down oil, and baking soda scrubs grime away.
However, dish soap doesn’t break down resin. Almost every time I’ve gotten resin on my hands before, I’ve tried washing with dish soap alone, and it’s been completely ineffective.
So I was pleasantly surprised when this actually worked.
I used a one-to-one mixture of dish soap and baking soda – in this case, one tablespoon of each. Then I mixed them together until I had a creamy liquid.
Then after getting resin on my hands, I scooped up some of the dish soap mixture, and basically washed my hands with it.
It was surprisingly effective – much more effective than dish soap alone. I assume the baking soda scraped the resin residue off my skin, leaving clean skin behind.
I give this method four stars, mostly because you have to have some forethought to use this. Mixing up a dish soap baking soda cream isn’t easy to do if your hands are already covered in resin.
2. Rubbing Alcohol
I thought this would be the best method. I was dead wrong.
Since resin dissolves in alcohol, I assumed it would dissolve in rubbing alcohol as well.
However, the rubbing alcohol I had was a 50% solution. And apparently, a 50% solution is not strong enough to dissolve resin.
Literally nothing happened. I poured this on my hands and rubbed for twenty seconds. My hands were just as covered in resin as they’d been 20 seconds before.
I ended up grabbing a clump of the baking soda/dish soap mixture just to get my hands clean enough to dry off.
One Star, although if you have a 99% solution, that might be worth a try.
3. Hand Sanitizer
After the rubbing alcohol fail, I was worried this whole experiment would be a wash, since most of these are dependent on alcohol dissolving resin.
But the hand sanitizer was incredibly effective, more so than I expected.
I don’t know if it’s the fact that there’s a bit more body to hand sanitizer than rubbing alcohol, if it’s more concentrated, or if it’s a different type of alcohol, but either way, this was fabulous.
I dumped resin on my hands just like I had the first two times, then liberally doused my hand with hand sanitizer.
Just to be clear – I used a lot of hand sanitizer. At least triple what I would use if I was just sanitizing my hands.
And for the first time, I could actually see a clear reaction between the hand sanitizer and the resin. The resin balled up into little blue chunks.
Then I dried my hands on a rag, and they weren’t sticky at all!
Five stars. Easy and effective!
4. Wet Wipes
This was fine. Just like the past two ideas, wet wipes are primarily alcohol, so the abrasion from the wipe plus alcohol should hopefully dissolve the resin and remove it from skin.
And it worked fairly well. I wiped as much as the resin off as I could with the wipe, the grabbed a fresh wipe and rubbed my hands again to try and remove any remaining stickiness.
Then I threw out the wipes, and dried my hands on a towel.
My skin was still sticky in a few spots that I missed, but they were generally clean. If I’d grabbed another wipe and rubbed the sticky the parts a third time, my hands would’ve been spotless.
Four stars. Not as easy as the hand sanitizer method, but not bad.
5. Vinegar-Soaked Rag
I was a little nervous about this one, because I know vinegar and bleach together creates deadly fumes. Whose to say vinegar and resin doesn’t also create deadly fumes?
Good news! It didn’t kill me.
That said, I still wouldn’t recommend mixing white vinegar with random things, including resin.
Plus, it was not really an effective way to remove resin. Vinegar does not dissolve resin, but the internet recommended it, so I thought I’d give it a shot.
I poured white vinegar on a rag, then wiped my hands with it. Obviously, the rag removed the bulk of the resin.
But the vinegar didn’t dissolve the sticky residue left behind on my skin anymore than water would.
Two stars. Ineffective, and my hands smelled bad.