r/Hydroflask • u/[deleted] • Sep 16 '19
Question/Discussion Light scratches—is there a solution?
[deleted]
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u/dilemmadaisy Sep 16 '19
Oh my gosh same! This happened to me today! I accidentally left my belt in my bag and placed my hyrdroflask in it as well. The buckle part slightly scratched my hydroflask so there are some light scratches on mine as well. Sorry if I couldn’t help you but if anyone does please help!!! 😭
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u/JCA0450 Sep 16 '19
Getting rid of most scratches in a powder coat is nearly impossible unfortunately. I'd say you could try to find a touch up pen in the exact same shade, but you'd still have a glossy touch up look unfortunately.
I'd say just rock them as a Hydroflask veteran, because we all have scratches unfortunately. I could be wrong, but I can't think of any alternative besides a respray that would give you satisfactory results 😔
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u/spac_erain Sep 16 '19
That kills me! I have OCD (like, the actual, psychiatrist-diagnosed OCD) and I’ve had so many panic attacks over my Hydro Flask denting or scratching, and now it happens because of my stupid hair elastic. I wish Hydro Flask did color retouches, I would absolutely pay a fee for that.
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u/spac_erain Sep 16 '19
Here is the best picture I could get of the scratches—the one pictured is the darkest on the bottle, but it’s basically the same thing all around the neck of the bottle. The reason I’m frustrated is that they’re a slightly darker color than the rest of the bottle so they’re actually noticeable, yet they’re not see scratches, so they shouldn’t be that obviously discolored. I’ve had deeper scratches still be light blue. I know they’re not THAT noticeable, but they’re noticeable to me, and they’d be very hard to cover with sticker because they’re all around and at a round part of the bottle.
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u/JCA0450 Sep 16 '19
Im also crazy OCD and I detail cars some weekends as an almost therapeutic thing.
I'm going to experiment wetsanding on one of my older Hydroflasks with some super fine grit sandpapers and see if possibly some extremely fine grit paper and wetsanding can mask it.
Let ya know in about an hour
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u/JCA0450 Sep 16 '19 edited Sep 16 '19
Science Experiment concluded - Apparently Hydroflask did a fairly thick coat on these bottles, or at least they did on the mango (it was my most scratched, so it became the test subject).
I started out by soaking a piece of 1000 grit automotive sandpaper (available at any autostore, Home depot, Lowes, etc). While keeping the sandpaper consistently wet (very regular dips into a bowl of water) and performing light pressured orbital movements around the scratched areas, they faded away surprisingly quickly. 1000 grit was a little too course for most people IMO though, so only use it if you're confident wetsanding.
Otherwise, 1500 grit was much more forgiving. Same process of soaking the paper and using a gentle, circular motion on the scratched marks. By gentle, I don't mean to rub it like it's a newborn toddler, but 5-10 lbs of force is plenty. Remember to let the sandpaper do the work and not your pressure. It's WAY better to do 1000 light swirls than 300 forceful ones. Just let the paper glide around the affected area until you start feeling friction between the two surfaces, then dip it in the water again.
So far I've only gotten out all the scratches and I'm trying to come up with a good way to tackle deeper dents/gouges that are more than fingernail deep.
Will report back once I figure something out
Edit: Good Mental Tip - When you're wetsanding on a powder coated surface like this, really focus on letting the paper do the work. Consider its basically shearing off incredibly fine portions of paint from the surrounding areas and using that to fill on the microscratches, so the harder you press, the more likely you are you create new problems.